Thou Which Art but Air
by writerofprose
Summary: From the day they met, Q and Picard have pulled and repelled each other like spinning magnets. As far as Picard's concerned, their interactions have been tense, too many, and better off forgotten. But as Picard shows signs of aging, Q begins to hope that they might have something more.
1. Chapter 1

_This is an almost complete rewrite of the story published here under the name "Pals?" 3 years ago. (It's much better now. And longer.) I do not own any of these characters, blah blah, etc. I hope you enjoy!_

* * *

A friend of mine once asked me what I would do when Jean-Luc Picard died. "What will you play with then?" he said, shimmering and expanding his essence in an expression I knew to be a smile.

I shimmered and expanded back. I was expected to make light of it, to _think _light of it, to never be seriously worried at the prospect of a death, being unable to die myself. I said something clever, something to put him laughing and to forget about whatever concern had prompted him to ask. Something like, "I'm counting down the days. It's then I can _start_ playing."

What will I do when Jean-Luc dies? Truthfully? I have no idea.

I have pondered the day when he no longer permits me to save his life. I have saved his life twice, once from a faulty heart malfunction compliments of a Nausican in a bar, once from an explosion of the _Enterprise_. During the latter I saved his entire crew in the process which softened the deal for him. I have pondered the day when it goes further than that, when I will save his life despite his knowledge, despite even his explicit instructions to the contrary, the day when he becomes aware of my doing that, having lived to one-hundred and fifty or so without dying, without even aging. The day when he orders me to let him age—to, essentially, _watch_ him die. We'll argue. I have imagined that argument with amusement, yes, but usually with an aching dread.

And how quickly it will come! In forty years he's a hundred. Sixty years, a hundred and twenty. Sixty years is nothing to me, a speck of dust floating through the glow of my life.

You can understand why I've been bothering him more than usual lately.

Nothing intrusive. Nothing dramatic. Simply this: I have taken to being in his quarters when he retires for the evening.

That first night when he came through the door, I was lying across his bed. The way he startled, you'd think I was naked instead of clothed in my usual Starfleet reds.

"You," he said.

But I explained to him, and pleasantly, that I would remain with him for one hour, only _one_ hour, that he had no choice in the matter and no time would be lost anyway. I had slipped him out of time. He wouldn't age, nothing would change, no one would miss him and once the hour was done I would resume the clock and vanish into the stars, whereupon he could go about his business as he pleased.

"Win-win," I said with an amicable shrug, having stood from the bed.

He laughed at me, a belly laugh making his head tilt back. I stood straighter. It was as if he saw exactly what I was doing, and I didn't want to admit to anything. I didn't want to alarm him with his own mortality, I told myself, not wanting to think about my feelings more than that.

"What the hell is this about, Q?"

"Exactly what I said it was about. Shall I replay it for you?"

"You… want to speak with me… for one hour's time."

"Speak, whisper, intone, sit and stare at each other over candlelight. I don't care what. The main condition is that we are both here."

He rolled his eyes at the floor. Shuffling around me, he called Earl Gray tea out of his computer. "I see no winning here, Q."

"You have an entire hour with a Q." I held out my hands. "Exclusively. My undivided attention. You don't see how that might be good for you?"

He shot me a look to say he did _not_. He sat on a couch against the window, clasping his tea like it was a beggar's cup, like it was raining and he was in for a long, cold war against the elements. He turned away from me.

"Oh, I know," I groaned. "I know it's sheer torture, being in the same room with me, but I'm flattered you're making the best of it." I paused for him to note the sarcasm. He didn't.

I tried to reason with him. "Compared to anything else we've done together, this is nothing. Usually I take you somewhere. Somewhere exciting. Do you think your pedantic starship excites me? But you're comfortable here. You see? I'm doing what I always do, except I'm meeting you halfway."

"Halfway," he said, unconvinced.

"Compromise. It's what you do when there are two incompatible wishes. I wish to speak with you. And you wish for anything but."

That last part wasn't true. I knew it wasn't true, but I was starting with the image he projected and working from there.

He glanced up at me, suspicion all over his features.

I might have told him I knew how he really felt. I might have revealed I had heard him twice confess to Riker that I was capable of kindness, which for Jean-Luc Picard to confess of anyone betrayed something deeper than mere interest. I might have argued I wasn't acting without provocation, considering.

He lowered his eyes. He was too proud to answer.

As was I, I suppose—too proud to go further than he would. I was Q. I could drain his mind in an instant and have it spread between us on the floor, the facts, there, where he would have to acknowledge them. "We could be friends," I might have said. "We _are_ friends, aren't we?"

Instead, I lay on the bed. The bed as if to tell him he would not be sleeping during my hour. During my hour, he would talk to me or he would do nothing.

Total silence prevailed except for those few quiet slurps he made with his tea. I left him after an hour as I had promised.

The next evening, I greeted him at the door. He didn't react, going straight to the replicator. "You remembered," I said pleasantly.

"I've alerted the staff to your presence. I can't stop you, Q, but I can ask you to stay away from my ship, my crew. You've honored that in the past."

"I have no intention of touching your crew. I'm not here for them, I'm here for you."

He nodded to himself. "Thank you." And said nothing else for the hour.

And nothing for the next two evenings either. He was sending me a message. But I knew him, and I knew that he would break eventually. I was playing the long game. A Q can afford to do that.

There was a wooden sculpture on the coffee table where he took his tea. When he came through the door, I was sitting on the table, examining it. "What's this?" I asked him. When he didn't reply, I waited until he sat. Then I slid my finger along the sculpture. He sipped his tea to show how unfazed he was. A flame burst from my thumb. I held it under, and with a little nudge from me part of the sculpture began to smoke. Then catch fire.

He stiffened. "Q."

"Hm?"

"Stop that. Q, you're going to fix that."

The air smelled of burnt cedar. "I am?"

"Dammit, Q." He shoved his tea on the table, spilling it in the process. He went to the windows, adjusting his uniform, squeezing his hands into fists. The frustration which had been brewing for days had finally burst.

I surged with pleasure. Externally, however, I revealed nothing.

"I'll fix it if you tell me where it came from," I said over the whooshing of the flame. Half of the sculpture was engulfed.

He mumbled something, something any normal human ear wouldn't have picked up. Mine did.

"You and your forced compromises," he said.

I couldn't resist a response. "It isn't fair. I admit that. But nothing with me ever is. That's the difference between you and between me." I didn't mean it spitefully, and I hoped he heard it in my voice. It _was_ the difference between us, between having power and having none. I blew the flame out and restored the sculpture to what it had been. I even cleaned up the mess he'd made with his tea.

He looked at me, hard and long. Half of his face glowed white with starlight, half in shade.

"From my father," he said. "One of the few gifts he gave me."

"You didn't have to answer. You called my bluff, you won that round. What was the occasion?"

He paused to remember. "For working my first year in the winery. I was twelve. Maybe thirteen. He wanted to encourage me on in the family business, if I remember correctly."

I nodded and cupped my hands around my knee.

"He never wanted me to join Starfleet," Picard said. "We argued about that often…"

It was more than he'd wanted to say. His stopping point, that night.

The next night, he continued to behave as if I wasn't there—even after I took a book out of his hands and put it back on the shelf, then five minutes later began to read it myself. He preferred staring at the floor to speaking with me. It must have been difficult for him, walking through a door and transforming from a captain of a thousand into… this. But I couldn't help that.

The seventh night I was in my usual spot on the bed. He asked me from the doorway after he was sure it had closed, the weariness in his voice palpable, "Q, how long will this continue?"

"Does it matter? You lose nothing by my presence here. Not time, not reputation, not rest."

"My sanity."

I smiled at the ceiling. "After a ten hour shift with your hapless crew, if you're not foaming at the mouth by the time you reach me nothing I say will harm you. _Mon capitaine_, you are iron." I laughed a puff through my nose. "Sanity."

Fifteen minutes later, I rolled to my side and asked him, "Why didn't your father want you in Starfleet? Not that I don't wholeheartedly agree with him."

I heard the slow exhale of him realizing something. "If my past is what you want, help yourself. I can't stop you from looking. You would see anything you wanted better than I could relay it."

"Maybe I want to hear you tell me."

"Ah," he said. "You could probably arrange that too."

"I could. I could _force_ you to tell me..."

"You could also conjure up some other version of myself. Some alternate reality. Can't you do that, Q? Don't you skip through the multiverses as deftly as we do the stars? Can't you manipulate them as this one?"

"It's cute how you remind me of my power."

"It was a question."

"Yes to all the above."

I sat up, sat on the edge of the bed as he slurped his tea. "This is fun. Ask me something else about me." His silence amused and sobered me all at once. I strolled into the space in front of him. "Memories are different from facts. Facts die with the past. It's only the memories that live on, that mean anything to anyone. I want to know what you think of your father, Jean-Luc, not how your father actually was. Your memory is all that matters as far as that is concerned. And yes, I could pester some other version of you, but I'd probably run into some over version of me. I don't love doing that."

He glared at me. "Is that really how it works?"

I smiled. "Would you like to see?"

"No. No, I would not like to see. Q, I'm trying to get rid of you." He laughed. "You're like the scorned lover who won't take a hint."

"That's an interesting simile."

"You're Titiana, deeply confused."

"Which makes you the fool with the ass's head?"

"You keep telling me how insignificant I am—"

"When have I ever called you that?" I interjected.

"—how flattered I should be that you lock me up like this."

"When I say flattered I don't mean _flattered_." I sat across from him. "Jean-Luc, why is it every time I see you we get into an argument?"

"_You_. You create chaos wherever you go. You force your will on others."

"What am I forcing? I am yours, Jean-Luc, yours for this hour, to talk to, to ignore. Ask me anything, I'll give it to you. I _want_ to give it to you. You must know it's always been this way."

"Very well. I ask you to leave the Enterprise."

"Unfair. You're only ever on the Enterprise."

"Yes. I ask for you to _leave me alone_."

I wasn't going to play that game again. I inched closer. "You pretend to despise me. I know it isn't true."

His jaw was tense as he stared me down. His eyes were narrowed, bead-like. He wanted me to believe him; all of his posture screamed it: _I am telling you the truth dammit_. But I went deeper than that.

I've never made a habit of invading human minds. I like to gloat that I can, but in practice I'm far more conservative. Most humans are boring, and with Jean-Luc I suppose I had never felt comfortable taking the liberty. It was the first time I had touched his mind since Farpoint, the first time I had wanted to, and so I was there, instantly, feeling his thoughts like so many fibers of a cloth. I found the area I wanted—the threads that spoke of me in muted colors and flimsier strands—and I pushed in, past the thoughts he was having now to the thoughts he'd had two or three years ago, after I had spared his life and the lives of his race. The thoughts nine years ago, when we had first met. Everything in between. I saw all of it at once.

It was as I expected. He didn't hate me. Some of the time he thought well of me. I found pleasure at my quips. I found disappointment at my apathy for the mortals he held so dear. _There_, I thought, _he wants me to improve. That means something._

And then I saw what I was looking for, the reason for his distance. Fear. It lurked in his subconscious—Jean-Luc could never consciously be afraid—but it was there, fueling him now. I was too powerful. Too risky to keep around for long. What would I meddle in next? What would be the cost?

But more importantly than seeing his mind, I let him _feel_ that I was seeing it. It felt less like I was violating him if he knew.

His head twitched to the side. His eyes fell. "Stop," he said darkly.

So I did.

In the silence that followed, I leaned toward him. I spoke very quietly, although no one but he was listening. "You don't have to fear me, Jean-Luc. I would never harm you."

His voice was venom. "Get out. Get out of my quarters, now. I never want to see you again. Get out, Q. You look again, you see how I serious I am about that."

Finally. I had shaken him at last.

I stood, feeling as though I had won a great victory. I plopped into his bed. My fingers slipped over my mouth, hiding my smile.


	2. Chapter 2

Picard guessed he was due for a confrontation when Counselor Troi followed him out of the observation lounge and across the bridge. She hung back when he entered his ready room, giving him time to settle, likely. The tell-tale chime followed a few moments later.

"Come," Picard said, sounding as irritable as he felt. It wasn't as if he could hide his irritableness from her anyway.

She entered, silent until the door swished shut. Cool and straight-backed, the image of formality. "There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just come out and say it. I think we should schedule a time for us to talk."

Picard raised his eyebrows and pretended to be busy at his desk. "Talk."

"Yes. An hour, maybe longer if it's needed. Captain," she joined her hands at her waist, "I'm concerned you're under a great deal of stress."

"Stress."

"I'm sensing that, yes. For the last several days, it seems to be getting worse."

And it seemed that everyone was reading his mind lately. Had they no thoughts of their own to entertain them? He struggled for a response, for a way to reassure her that he would be just fine and there was no need for any sort of psychoanalysis, thank you. He managed a thin smile.

"Thank you for your concern, Counselor. It's appreciated. But I can assure you I am under no more stress than that which normally besets a captain of a starship."

She came forward and slipped into one of his chairs. _Merde_, he thought. She folded her hands on the desk, calmly, while he tried to read Lieutenant La Forge's report on a scheduled engine maintenance. He kept re-reading the first sentence.

"Does this have anything to do with Q?" she asked.

"Q?"

"You mentioned last week that he had visited you. I haven't felt you leave the ship, but of course where Q is concerned that doesn't mean much. Is he still visiting you?"

"Still visiting me?"

Troi lowered her chin, pressing him with a glare. "Captain, you're repeating me."

"Repeating you," he said, simply to be annoying.

"Yes. It's a common defensive mechanism. It usually indicates you aren't comfortable with the line of questioning."

He set the report aside. "I'm sorry. I'm a little busy, Counselor."

"I understand. And we can speak at another time—"

"We don't need to speak at all."

His voice snapped a little more than he would have liked. She didn't flinch. She had raised her chin again, her eyes all-understanding, all-patient, betraying, he was sure, more telepathy on her end. Though _empathy_ was the correct word, wasn't it.

Picard wished they would stay out of his mind. He wished empaths and telepaths and Qs never existed, that he could simply mind his starship as it pleased him. Years he had spent working for this place of authority only to be treated like a child. Worse: a _thing_, with a mind as accessible as one of Mr. La Forge's reports.

"I'm sensing anger," the Counselor said coolly.

Picard rolled back in his chair. An emotion had taken him, a need, suddenly, to flee the room. He controlled it, suppressed it expertly, and looked to Deanna to see if she'd noticed.

She had. Her surprise was unmistakable—if tactfully contained—in her slightly cocked eyebrow.

"If you'll excuse me, Counselor. I ah—I remember I've missed an appointment." He took Mr. La Forge's report and left.

In the turbolift the inevitable embarrassment washed over him. _She can see you're lying, you fool_. And here, now, she could even see he was embarrassed. He hid in his quarters for a half an hour until the invented appointment was "finished," and then with all the nerves of a tawdry schoolboy he returned to the bridge.

She was leaning over his chair saying something to Riker. Riker laughed, and she was smirking as she leaned back to make room for Picard. Picard took his seat, wondering: Was it something about him that they had laughed about? "Stressed," the Counselor had described him earlier. Had the others noticed? Was he the butt of every crewmember's joke?

"Hello to you too, sir," Riker said.

"Oh. Sorry, Number One. Preoccupied."

Counselor Troi said nothing, always the consummate professional. It occurred to Picard that of course she hadn't been talking about him behind his back, that it was an extension of his stress that he had thought so. Stress bred worry bred paranoia. For he _was_ stressed; she was right about that. And stressed moreso than usual; she was right about that too.

Q _had_ been getting to him. Every evening Picard had nowhere to go but straight into Q's mousetrap. Even an idea of switching rooms or avoiding his quarters altogether he knew to be futile. If the point of Q being here was their interaction, and Q had said it was, he would simply alter the rules.

Picard sighed, loud and long, and leaned to his left.

"Tomorrow," he whispered to Deanna. "0800 hours?"

He could hear the smugness in her voice. "I'll clear my schedule."

Picard leaned back, but instead of melting like he had expected the stress was still there, still a palpable band around his rib cage. He realized why: 'tomorrow' was after 'tonight,' and tonight was the source of all his problems.

He leaned left again. Deanna straightened and inclined her head.

"Counselor, do you think we could speak… now?"

* * *

They met in the observation lounge. It was less formal, less worrisome considering the sudden nature of their leaving the bridge. The last thing Picard wanted was to worry the crew. They took their usual seats, Picard at the head, Deanna on his left, and she gave him ample time to collect his thoughts.

He stared at their reflections in the long, obsidian table and soon realized it was easier just to start.

"It's as you guessed. Q has been visiting me beyond that first night. Nothing I say will put him off. The reason you haven't sensed my ah, disconcertion… is because he's been taking me out of time." He paused to see if she understood, although of course she didn't. This was Q and therefore nothing about it made sense. "He removes me from the timeline for the space of an hour. I'm still in my quarters; nothing's changed as far as I'm concerned. We talk. Sometimes we say nothing at all. And then, after an hour… he leaves." Picard shrugged, not sure how else to elaborate.

"You talk," she said.

"Yes. He seems to want to talk to me. He's said it isn't about the crew, I made sure of that, but why _me_ is anyone's guess." He muttered the last part, finding it difficult to make eye contact with her anymore. He searched the room for something else, beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake in coming here. Perhaps a morning appointment would have been more discreet.

"Q has always singled you out. In some circumstances I would say he even thought of you as a friend."

Picard laughed. "We are not friends."

"No. But like-minded, perhaps?"

"Counselor. This is the entity who was threatening to wipe out humanity not four years ago, and could have done it. Like-minded? Even now he's informed me he will visit me indefinitely, whether I acknowledge him or not. I have no choice in the matter. No options. No recourse."

Her lips thinned. "Is Q… intimate with you?"

"Good lord no!" Shock raised his eyebrows. "Certainly not."

"So you're telling me these advances are purely platonic."

"It would seem. Rather it _is_."

She nodded. "Has he told you what he wants? Some reason for these meetings?"

That was usually the case, wasn't it. Q had always made his intentions known. Nothing so vague as wanting to "talk." Picard perused through his memories of the last week, but all the visits seemed to meld into one. He remembered demanding for Q to leave, angrier than he'd been in a long time, and the sunken feeling when Q had not. It had been two evenings since that one, since the evening when Q had invaded his mind.

"He seemed interested in a sculpture on my table. He wanted me to tell him where I received it. He lectured me on memories and claimed to be curious about my own. Some test of his, I'm sure. Now that you mention it, this seems to be a common theme with him. Him wanting to prove we are more alike than I realize. It's preposterous."

"It is."

At her plain, unabashed agreement, Picard felt relieved.

"I don't know why he's visiting me, no. I wish I did."

She asked then what he had told Q about the sculpture, and Picard answered her tactfully. And he answered her next question about what Q had said about memories, tactful with that one too. He wasn't being dishonest, just wringing all possible emotion from the story. There were some things too personal to reveal, even to a Counselor whose professional career depended on her telling no one any of this. But he told her all of the facts, at least. Or all except one. He didn't tell her about Q's invasion of his mind. The situation was accosting enough without that detail. Q's words still troubled him.

_You don't have to fear me, Jean-Luc. I would never hurt you._

Was fear what this was about? About ridding Picard of his fear of Q? Picard wasn't even sure he did fear Q.

Troi was saying something. "…not to think of him only in terms of his power, to treat him like anyone else, a person with thoughts, with feelings. And as such this seems to be a classic case of one person reaching out to another."

"By _why_?" Picard said. "And despite my express wishes to the contrary? Surely if he wanted to 'teach' me something he would come out and say it. He's done that before, and sooner than this." Picard shook his head. "I just wish I could know how to…" He searched for the words. "How to discourage him in this."

"Maybe," she said, folding her hands on the table. "Maybe that's a good place to start."

Picard frowned.

"To stop trying to discourage him," she said.


	3. Chapter 3

Counselor Troi had giving him good advice, solid advice. But for two days Jean-Luc Picard hadn't taken the advice. He didn't feel mentally prepared, and a part of him hoped the situation would resolve on its own. It didn't. Every day Picard felt the strain of having something so maddening as Q cap off his evening, knowing full well that Q felt just the opposite. Q probably felt rejuvenated, not tired; encouraged, not dissuaded. Picard could stand it no longer.

The door swished open. Q was on the bed, motionless as though his mind were elsewhere, as though he were steeling himself for Picard to ignore him yet again. Not tonight. Picard stood over him.

"Q, could I speak with you a moment?"

The entity's eyes snaked to Picard's. They were alien eyes, dangerous eyes, eyes that always served an unspoken reminder for Picard to tread carefully. Yet despite the intensity of the eyes, Q replied with an air of casual interest, "Isn't that why I'm here?"

Picard nodded. _One hour. _The last hour, he hoped.

He ordered two cups of Earl Gray from the replicator, extending one of them to Q.

With a quick inhale, Q rolled to his feet. "You seem chipper. Pleasant day at the office?" He accepted the tea.

Picard gestured to the couch and chair. "Would you like to sit down?"

When he had rehearsed this in his mind earlier that day, Picard had envisioned Q taking the chair. He was caught off guard when Q didn't, sitting instead in the couch with his feet on the table. Picard, who had already sat in the couch, inched as far away as possible. He didn't care if Q noticed.

"What's on your mind, Jean-Luc?" Q asked, closing his eyes. Reclining, he set the tea in his lap. "Don't worry, I'm not reading it anymore."

Picard felt a surge of annoyance he tried to ignore. He tried to focus on what ground _could_ be gained. Discerning Q's motives. How had the Counselor phrased it? Picard was a captain of Starfleet, a diplomat and envoy, and yet she had said it far better than he ever would.

"I wanted to apologize, Q, for my, ah. For my lack of hospitality."

Q's eyes snapped open, focusing on nothing.

Pleased to be on this side of things for once, Picard continued. "The universe is dynamic, vast. There are a lot of places you could be, but you're here, and I suppose there's some significance in that, some compliment to be had. You've offered me gifts, 'anything,' you said, and I'm aware that's an opportunity most never receive. Even the attention…" That line of thinking felt awkward. He abandoned it. "In summary, I think the time has come for me to… to offer _you_ anything. Anything within my power, that is. To return the favor."

It was a risk. It was also the only way to end this. He waited for Q to speak, to react, anything. Q's eyes had fallen to the cup of tea in his lap. He drank, and then promptly spat the liquid back into the cup.

"Disgusting," he said. He set the cup aside, souring over the aftertaste as if he might lick it out of his mouth. Picard knew stalling when he saw it.

"There must be something you want from me," Picard said. "Why else would you be here?"

"I told you. Conversation. How do you drink this every day?"

"You develop a taste. Q, I'm offering you anything."

"Yes, yes, I _heard_."

And then Q was on his feet, pacing the room. He seemed as unsettled as the time Amanda Rodgers had hurled him against the wall. "You? Offer _me_ anything?"

"I'm pleased the proposition interests you."

"Only in the sense that I have never been offered 'anything' so sincerely, so unironically by a mortal. It's baffling. It's downright funny. This is why I visit you, Jean-Luc. The way your mind works."

"Well, you seem so certain that I'm afraid of you, that I'm _beneath_ you, and yet here you are. I thought I would extend the olive branch."

"You are afraid of me. It was as plain as Shakespeare."

Picard smiled. "To most, Shakespeare is anything but plain."

"To most."

Picard sat back, keeping his expression as cool as possible. And yet how wonderful it felt to have upset Q. The roles reversed at last.

"For nine years you've followed me," Picard said. "You introduced me to new ideas, new species. You came to me when mortal for protection. Later you wanted to join my crew. You saved my life when my heart malfunctioned, allegedly, although I take your silence now as affirmation. You call yourself a god, _the_ God on more than one occasion. And so perhaps I am dense for only realizing this now, but after nine years it has occurred to me there must be _something_ you lack. Something you think I, or the Enterprise, or humanity perhaps, can give you."

Q had stopped pacing, was glaring at the stars. Sulking really. He could be so much like a child. "You know what that is."

"I would never presume. In all of your heavy-handed lessons, that is one thing I've learned. To never presume where you are concerned."

"Jean-Luc, I'd like to take you somewhere. I know my terms were that we would stay to this room, so I'm asking you. Let me take you somewhere."

"Where?"

Q didn't answer. He sat in the chair where Picard had wanted him to sit before, fully engaged now. As if everything before this had been play. The child was gone and all that remained was power, charisma, age. Sometimes Picard felt Q switched personalities like this to disarm him.

"You joined Starfleet to explore. A noble goal. I share it. But for the last forty years you've been stumbling around in the dark."

"I'm not going to argue over the merits of my career with you, Q."

"Good. You'd lose. Look at this." He gestured to the wooden sculpture on the table. "You put that there as a monument to your past, some marker as to how far you've come, but captain though you are your ship rarely takes you out of this section of the quadrant. You haven't seen the whole quadrant, much less the galaxy. Much less anything beyond that. Intergalactic space? There's a trove of life there too, if you know how to look for it. And so I'm not being hyperbolic when I say you haven't left the vineyard."

Picard tried to finish his tea in an attempt to appear unruffled. Q had hinted at this before, at his desire to see Picard explore beyond what Starfleet had assigned him, beyond "the limits of the human mind," but Picard had never taken it very seriously. He always assumed Q had used such statements as another way to lord his omnipotence over them, nothing more.

Q inched closer. "Let me take you somewhere. To see what you're missing. At least make an informed decision before you write off exploring forever."

"I am hardly writing off exploring forever. Thank you, but no."

"No? Why?"

"Because there is value in doing something yourself."

"Only as long as you're doing something valuable."

Picard sighed. He cleared both of their cups, leaving them in the replicator. On the way back he caught his face in the mirror. It looked old, tired. Nine years he had known Q. And those nine years and more, captaining the Enterprise. The age showed on him. On Q, nothing showed.

He poured himself a Saurian brandy—the real thing, a birthday gift from Riker—and thought about how it would be to explore. To really explore, without all the constraints and worries and rules of Starfleet. He liked those rules—he believed in them—but what would it feel like to worry only about himself? To boldly go with eyes ever forward, not on the ship, not on the crew? When was the last time he had seen anything new?

He wished Q would leave. It was unpleasant thinking about things that would never, could never, happen.

"Since you've offered to give me something," Q said from the next room, "I shouldn't give you the choice. I should make you go with me. It _is_ the only thing I want."

Picard strode into the room to find Q lying on his bed again. "No. Absolutely not."

"I don't mean forever."

"I offered you something within _my_ power."

"Yes, and it's within your power to come with me."

"You would be the facilitator."

"Is that how you see it? Oh that's sad." Q sat up, an elbow on his knee.

"I should recant the offer," Picard said.

"Go ahead. Recant it."

Picard said nothing. The Counselor's advice blinked "red alert" across his thoughts. As terrible as it would be, this was the only way to get rid of Q. Humoring him.

"So we're going?" Q asked.

"It is _not_ what I meant when I offered."

Q stood, straightening his shirt, looming over Picard who gave no ground. "You'll be happy you did. It'll be like that time with the Borg. You were thankful afterward."

"That time with the Borg indeed, that drives home the point. You claim you see fear in my mind? I think you've mistaken caution for fear—"

It became instantly dark. And the air was now humid, bone-chillingly cold. A moonless sky glowed with stars, navy against the pitch black of the ground, so pitch Picard couldn't see his own hands in front of him. He felt disembodied. At the same time, he was afraid to step anywhere lest he stub his toe.

He could breath. That was something.

"Damn you, Q," he thought but did not say. Instead he called out, "Q?" His voice was swallowed in the darkness, leading him to believe they were in some wide, open plain.

"Right here."

The voice bore from Picard's right. He was immensely relieved to hear it. Knowing Q, he was impossibly far from home. _Where no one has gone before._

He felt a thrill, but tried his best to work past it.

"Q, is it possible on this planet, or will we self-combust, that you give us some form of light?"

"But the stars are so lovely. And so 'never been seen by a human before.'"

"I'd like to see the planet. If this is a planet."

A hazy, sourceless glow grew across the landscape. It illuminated the distant mountains, the topography cluttered with short craggy rocks, and, the only landmark in sight, about three hundred meters away, a single pine tree.

"It is a planet," Q said. "An endangered one. It's the only one left in this star system after the sun burned through its core."

Picard started toward the pine tree. He felt drawn toward it, the only sign of life on a lifeless plain. A thousand questions boiled in his mind, bubbling to the surface, battling for primacy—questions about the planet, about its location, about this pine tree flourishing in the light of a dying sun, assuming Q hadn't planted it here himself. They were breathing oxygen, but had Q added that part? Picard knew that to ask any questions would fly in the face of the fact that he had insisted he did not want to be here, and so he kept silent. Tried to seem only mildly interested.

It was a struggle, one he wondered if Q could see right through. Probably he could. It was not difficult to guess Picard would be curious about an uncharted star system.

"Everything's died but this tree," Q said. "And no, that's none of my doing. It's a little anomaly of nature. I wonder what's causing it. _I_ know, but your scientists would have a field day. It's night now. You should see the dayside, where everything else on this rock burned to shreds."

Picard stopped walking. He scanned the horizon for signs of civilization.

"Of course there are billions of more interesting planets than this one, but I chose this one for two reasons. One, that tree. I wonder why it hasn't reproduced? Two, this." Q stomped on the ground. "There used to be human-like creatures here before the sun burned them out. I think you'd find it fascinating having a peek underneath this rubble. This exact pile, actually."

Picard looked longingly at the pile. "Don't tempt me."

"Well if that isn't exactly what I want to do."

"I don't have time, Q. Dammit there are thousands of worlds I _might_ explore."

"So explore them. I'll take you out of time, if that's what's bothering you. Just like we are now."

Picard looked from the rubble to Q and back. He scanned the fifteen or twenty steps he had taken toward the tree. And he scanned the tree, so closely resembling a pine tree of Earth, although taller, or perhaps that was an illusion considering it was the only upright object here.

He thought about how many weeks it would take to explore this planet, this one planet, whose flora and fauna were already dead. And how many planets after this? If they took a planet a day, how quickly would his leave add up? He thought about notifying Starfleet he was going off with Q.

That last thought made his stomach pang with dread. He realized he didn't want to be here anymore, needed to be anywhere but. Deanna had been wrong. This wasn't going to work.

"How convenient it would be," he said, "if this were merely a planet of your creation. If you had put that tree there. If you were inventing those ruins."

"Not convenient. Pointless. Do you know how many planets have ruins?"

"Countless, I suppose."

"So what's your point?"

"Where did you say this is?"

"I didn't say. It's the far side of the Delta Quadrant. It would take a lifetime for any of your ships to reach it, and by then it will be gone. Poof, when the sun goes nova. That's the third reason I chose it. Indefinite novelty."

"How do I know this is the Delta Quadrant? I didn't plot a course here."

"I'll show you on a map when we get back."

"Wonderful. Do it now."

A PADD appeared in Q's hand. He extended it to Picard, who grabbed it and without looking at it said, wearily, "I mean take us back."

Q touched his forehead as if he had a headache coming on. He was smiling, wincing to himself. "You've been here less than five minutes."

"I know. I'm sorry. Please, take me back."

"I should leave you here. This is not what you offered me and you know it."

"Then how long?" Picard held out his hands. "How long until you're satisfied? I'm telling you I've had my fill of this place. Now if you wish to force me to stay…"

"I do. I should. A lifetime. Then you have no one and nothing to go back to."

Picard knew Q wasn't serious, but the threat angered him just the same. It brought up memories of before, and remembering before, Picard could not contain his opinion any longer. "I'm not afraid of you. You hear me, Q? I'm not afraid of you, I _loathe_ you. If you are a god, you are the god of contradiction. You mention the Borg? The very day you showed us the Borg you told me that if I couldn't take a bloody nose I ought to go home and crawl under my bed. Oh yes, I remember. Eighteen of my crew died that day to teach me some lesson you thought was important. And then this charade in my quarters, you trying to tell me you're safe? Nothing is safe with you. You are a trickster, a fickle child at best, with so much power on your hands God help us all if we're in the path of one of your tantrums again. Or one of your _lessons_."

Picard felt propelled through the tirade like a sailboat in a wind. And as mysteriously as the wind had come, it died. He was relieved to have finally said it. He felt adrenaline flowing from his fingertips. He felt four inches taller.

Q had been staring at the ground through the duration, smiling to himself. Picard thought it appropriate, the smile, revealing how little Q cared. He almost laughed, too light to feel angry anymore.

"You. Loathe me?" Q said. "That's funny, because I didn't see that when I saw everything else."

"Then why don't you look again?"

"I believe you I'd see it now. I don't question your honesty, in this moment." Q eyed the vista around them, the pine tree. He sighed. "If I take you back, can we be friends again?" The question was lifeless, nothing to be taken seriously. Q lifted his hand, looking at it for a moment as if he saw something there he did not understand. Then, he snapped.

They appeared in Picard's quarters, still facing each other.

Picard was going to sleep. He didn't care if Q prevented him, or hung around to watch. He went to his closet to change out of his uniform into his bed clothes even as Q leaned in the doorway.

"The time we were gone doesn't count. You still have an hour to make up."

Picard didn't answer.

"Since you brought up things I once told you," Q said, "I once told you in all of the universe you were the closest thing I had to a friend."

Silence.

"I do consider you a friend, even if you don't consider me one. I'm not offended by the discrepancy; I don't think you have any friends."

Picard busied himself opening and shutting drawers.

"I should have said this earlier. It's easier to say once I know you'll reject the proposition."

If Q thought he would reject it, why was even asking? Picard couldn't hold his tongue. "Enough of this," he said, turning. "If you know my answer, I know your question. You're going to ask me to gallivant around the universe with you. Aren't you, Q?"

Q looked annoyed. He hesitated, as if he might change his answer.

Then: "Yes."

"No. My answer is no."

"Be careful when you say that. You aren't getting any younger."

"Oh, I am aware. Of course I'm aware. How dare you think you're more aware of that than I."

"And are you aware that _this_ is why you joined Starfleet? Exploring? And Starfleet has allowed you to do anything but?"

"You've told me that today, yes."

Q looked flustered. Picard took that chance to slip past him, through the doorway, towards the bed. He could taste the ending now. The Counselor had been right after all.

"Jean-Luc, please at least consider my offer. Don't dismiss it after a moment's thought."

"Goodnight, Q. Computer, lights."

The lights didn't go out. Picard pretended they did, turning over, pulling the covers around him. When he opened his eyes he wasn't startled to find Q crouched on the floor inches away from him. He simply shut his eyes again.

"You don't know what you're saying," Q said. "You can't know."

Picard began to fantasize about the peaceful morning he was going to have. Let Q respond how he may. Picard was done answering him, no more encouraging him. No more circling the carcass of whatever their relationship had been.

When he opened his eyes five minutes later, the room was dark and Q was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

It was three months later and Q still hadn't bothered him. Hadn't bothered him in the flesh, anyway. Because in those three months, Picard had mulled over Q's words more than he liked to admit. The first, most stinging of his realizations was that Q had been right. Picard wasn't an explorer anymore. He might have started out that way, but his job description had morphed sometime after becoming Captain. Maybe when the first crewmember had died as a direct result of his orders. It had never felt like exploring after that. It had felt irresponsible to think of it so.

He was a caretaker. A shepherd. A representative of freedom, equality, of everything the Federation stood for. Any exploring that happened as a result of those things was incidental. Unintentional even. Yes, he sailed the outer edges of charted space, and that was far more exploring than he would have done in a vineyard back on Earth, no matter what Q said otherwise—but there was a very clear, very real out of bounds. Signs which warned "Here There Be Monsters." Starfleet had more important things for him, most notably keeping its flagship (and top warship) close.

The second stinging realization: if he had wanted to be an explorer, he shouldn't have become a captain. He should have become a scientist. Less responsibility there, except the responsibility to learn, to discover. Perhaps a small part of him had wanted the power that came with a command position and that was why he'd compromised along the way. Regardless, he couldn't live in both worlds, not unless…

Unless Q.

Q's proposition _was_ tantalizing. A way to have both the Enterprise and the thrill of the new. He had given his answer, but he was not so foolish to think Q wouldn't accept another.

When Picard was younger, he had been thrilled to eschew his responsibility and drift wherever he may. Now that he was older, it was almost the opposite. Picard's responsibility to the Enterprise was a palpable presence in his life, as comforting as a friendship, as valuable as an aged wine. Without the Enterprise, what did he have? And what sort of life? Without the Enterprise, Picard would be faced with questions—and with demons—he had nearly forgotten about.

And so it was decided. This was the life he had chosen. He wouldn't leave. Not even on occasion. Not even to _think_ about leaving lest he stir up feelings of discontent, which may stir up something even worse.

Which left one more decision to be made.

The star charts of the Delta Quadrant Q had left in Picard's quarters, a thousand solar systems unknown to the Federation and the planet Picard had visited marked in bold, bright red. What was Picard to do with it? He couldn't bear to erase it, and had in fact added it to the computer's memory in case the PADD's memory failed. Cartographers might spend hundreds of years compiling that amount of information… Or Picard might hand it over. There would be no doubt as to its legitimacy. He wasn't some loafer claiming history with Q—he _had_ history with Q, documented—and he had the credibility that being Captain of the Enterprise lent him. When Picard had been thrown to the edge of the galaxy by Wesley Crusher's Traveller, he had logged a full report to the Federation then. Why was this any different? He would tell them for progress and for science, not for glory.

But what held him back, every time he went to do it, was Q. Q and Picard's own regret about Q. Picard had mulled that over too.

Q was capable of deplorable things and had done deplorable things on several of their meetings, but that did not mean everything Q did was deplorable. That did not make him some un-person who had waived all his claim to dignity and acknowledgment. If Picard was to ever boast to the Federation about the Delta quadrant, for his conscience's sake he needed to apologize to Q. He had been honest, but he had not been kind.

Perhaps with this, the cord would be cut. The chapter of their relationship would be closed forever. Perhaps, as the Counselor had implied, Picard had only ever encouraged Q by being stubborn.

* * *

The trouble of the apology was getting Q's attention, an activity at which some might say Picard was proficient. If only it had ever been in his control.

Riker was leaning over Commander Data's shoulder at ops, conferring on some report or another, when Picard approached. They broke off conversation. Riker stood straight.

"Mr. Data, I have a rather unusual request. I would like you to send out a hail on all frequencies. It should read, 'Captain calling Delta pine.' Nothing more."

"Delta pine, sir? If this is a person you wish for me to hail, perhaps—"

"It isn't. It's a bit of an inside joke. Just Delta pine will do."

Riker raised his chin, narrowed his eyes.

"It's personal in nature," Picard clarified. "And I'm aware that subspace communications should not be used in this manner but I think we'll all overlook it just this time, yes?"

Data raised his eyebrows and blinked several times, then with insect-like agility tapped the console.

"You'll have to enlighten me, sir. I'm curious," Riker said.

"Oh no, Number One. You are never to ask me about this again, Captain's orders." Picard smiled to let him know it was a joke—an order and a joke in one—and retreated to the turbolift, pleased all of that business was over with.

He hoped it would work. He wasn't sure what else to try.

The turbolift hummed to life. There was a hissing sound Picard wasn't used to hearing. For a second he thought it was a malfunction.

"Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Starfleet, what can the Q Continuum do for you today?" Q was leaning against the wall, arms folded, both looking and sounding bored.

"You must be watching us perpetually," Picard marveled, making sure to say "us."

"A very, very, _very_ small part of my mind keeps an ear tuned. Usually I forget I'm doing it."

"I see," Picard said, wondering if there was an inoffensive way of asking Q to stop.

"Did you want something?" Q asked.

"Yes. To talk."

"Here?"

"No. My ready room would be better."

They appeared there. Picard, standing behind his desk. Q tapped a console to lock the door then strolled over to inspect the fish.

"Thank you," Picard said.

"Anything I can do for your precious privacy."

A reference to the anonymous hail. At least Picard hoped that was all it was. He sat, trying to remember what he was going to say. Oh yes: the apology. He had to gather his thoughts. He had not expected Q to appear so soon.

"I've been observing humans lately," Q said.

"Oh?"

"Yes. On Earth. Straight to the source. I've paid very special attention to friendships." Q ordered two Earl Grays at the replicator, giving one to Picard. A tin of sugar appeared and Q stirred in three spoonfulls. "Acquiring a taste," he explained.

Picard sipped the tea. He wasn't sure he wanted to ask, but he did. He needed Q in a good mood. "Friendships?"

"Right, yes. They're not so different from friendships among my own kind. Although given our self-sufficient nature, the Q tend to be more… reclusive."

In the lull that followed, Picard wasn't sure what to add. He wasn't sure how to move on either, not without a jarring change of subject that might be interpreted as stubborn. He sipped the tea, taking his time with it.

"So," Q said, "why am I here?"

"Of course." Picard set down the cup. "I wanted to apologize. What I said to you, three months ago, I meant. But I shouldn't have said it like that."

"You shouldn't have lost your cool."

"Yes."

"Your _cool_." Q intoned the word as if he were tasting it. "I don't notice things like that. I was pleased you were being honest with me. Well, not altogether pleased. Apology accepted."

"Thank you."

Q looked away, looking distracted. He took the tea to the window, showing no sign of leaving.

"Would you mind if I…?" Picard hesitated since he had not planned on asking, merely on apologizing and then proceeding on his own.

"If you told Starfleet about our little trip?" Q glanced at him sidelong. "Of course you want to. I had assumed, if you had taken my offer, you would want to. You love knowledge, but you have a deep and disgusting streak of responsibility. Which, I suspect, is why you didn't take me up on my offer to begin with. Maybe when you're done with Starfleet."

They locked eyes. It was only for a second, as if Q was ensuring Picard had understood his meaning.

Picard did understand, but he wished he hadn't. He resented that the offer was being extended like this, not that he was going to encourage Q by telling him. He looked down. Rotated the tea cup a full circle. He wanted Q to leave.

He decided a question wouldn't be out of order. "Is there something on your mind?"

Q laughed. "You're the one that brought me here."

"I did, yes. And I, ah… appreciate you coming."

"Look at you, squirming. You think it will be like last time where I never go away. You've got what you wanted, and now I'm supposed to leave."

Q snapped and the teacups vanished with a hiss that startled Picard. So tense today. He disguised the flinch with movement, readjusting himself in his chair. He could feel Q studying him as though he saw right through it.

"I wasn't going to say this now," Q said. "I was going to think about it a while longer. But let's have it over with, shall we? Since my presence _unnerves_ you so." He sat opposite the desk, and quite the reverse from what Picard would have expected, he looked more comfortable, more relaxed than before. "You remember when I looked into your mind and saw fear? I assumed it had to do with me. Everyone fears me, why not you? I don't say this but once a billion years, so, brace yourself: _I was wrong_. And I've had time to think about just how wrong I was. Jean-Luc Picard is different from mere mortals. Jean-Luc Picard is the captain of a starship, and he's far more afraid about his _image_. It's not even about being a captain, really. I think even if you were begging on a street corner you would still resent each and every penny I gave you. God forbid anyone look at your accomplishments and see me."

Q leaned back as though giving Picard a moment to let this revelation sink in. By the time he continued, Picard was beginning to worry that he had somehow gone too far. "You think I don't understand friendships. I know without you saying it, and not because I'm reading your mind. So, I observed human friendships. And you're right: I didn't understand them. Because I realize now what an ass I've been in considering you one."

Their eyes locked.

Without movement, without smugness, without any reaction at all, Q continued. "I don't think you've ever been in a room with me without wanting to leave. Never accepted a gift without wishing you'd gotten it some other way. You've never even thanked me for saving your life. Not that I crave sycophancy, because I _don't_, but it just sort of… stuck out to me, that's all. I save your life, and nothing."

"The heart," Picard murmured. "I didn't know it was you."

"You knew."

"I did _not_ know, not until three months ago."

"You could have asked. And when your ship exploded last year and I put a stop to that, _you said nothing_."

"I did. I did thank you."

"'On behalf of my crew, thank you.' Those exact words. I went back and listened."

Picard had no response. He supposed it was true that he hadn't thanked Q personally.

"But I didn't come here to beg an apology," Q said, "although I guess I already got one. A different one."

"Thank you for saving my life," Picard said quickly. "Twice. Thank you."

Q's eyes remained dangerous even as he smiled. "You're very welcome, Jean-Luc. I'm glad I did, considering how I felt back then. But frankly, considering how I feel now, it isn't something you should ever expect again."

"Of course not," Picard said, feeling that Q had just slapped him.

"And I should thank _you_, really," Q said.

"Why is that?"

"Because I came here, three and something months ago, for a purpose. For some nagging doubt in me. But it's gone now. And I think you had a part in expunging it. So, thank you."

It wasn't the sort of thing you said 'you're welcome' to. Picard watched Q stand with a worrying mix of helplessness, confusion, expectancy. He could see things spinning out of control but was frozen against reaching out and stopping them. How could he, before he really understood what he was stopping? And Q's expression was nearly his opposite, a peaceful frigility Picard had first seen at Farpoint and had not seen any time since. It was as though Picard was an insect and Q was the eternal, unfailing sun and anything might happen.

"Q, if it was anything I said…"

Q's laugh was slight. "Why would it be anything you said? You should trust me. It's better for both of us this way."

"What is?"

Q lowered his eyes, lowered his hand to tap the desk three times. "Do what you like. With what I've told you, showed you, I don't care. I'm leaving you now. Forever this time."

And with that, he vanished.

Picard sat there for a long moment, stunned. Someone paged him, but he neither acknowledged the message nor remembered later who had done it. He looked around for things to clear away, tea cups and so forth, but Q had taken all of the mess with him. There was nothing for Picard to do but… go on. Unimpeded. Unrestrained.

Finally what he had asked for. He waited for the surge of energy, the rush that accompanies long-awaited gratification. But it didn't come. Instead he felt an emptiness he was afraid to decipher. He decided to call it peace.

His bridge outside. The crew, the Federation, the entirety of the galaxy to himself. And it had been so easy, as easy as not caring what happened anymore, as easy as looking the danger straight in the eye and shrugging.

What Q had said about Picard resenting Q's help, about being overly concerned with his image? It was years before Picard even remembered that part of things, much less considered if it was true.


	5. Chapter 5

Waste, waste, _waste_. It was the single word on my mind the whole of our last little chat. How much time I had spent on him. How much effort and thought—me. _Me_. Whole planets beg for my attention, now and billions of years to come. Me, who breathes stars into existence. Me, who parts nebulae with a wave of my hand.

And he was saying no to me. He was speaking to me only for the betterment of his _conscience_, otherwise he did not care.

Me.

Well _I _would have no more of it. I would not play the stairs to his moral high ground. I didn't even tell him to what extent he'd offended me, merely gave him my adieus and left. The vale over my eyes, which I'd been pulling back so slowly, so cautiously for the last three months, was ripped off to the blinding shine of clarity.

And anger. And _shame_, for I could see exactly why the Q had been laughing at me for the last few years. And then anger again, hot and strong.

The first thing I did upon leaving him was look up some planet where they worshipped me and let them go about it. It was a planet his beloved Starfleet might refer to as Class Y, the occupants of which were made entirely of living rock. I appeared to them as a crystal and they oohed and ahhed over me, attending to my every whim while I sat there for weeks and thought. Sometimes I tried not to think, and being worshipped was good for that. They told me how perfect I was. They reminded me I was not anyone to be denied. They erected a temple of themselves around me by the time that I left—by the time I had come to accept my anger and contain it.

It's crucial to contain your anger if you are Q, otherwise you might annihilate something without ever realizing it. Especially if your anger is affixed on one person, one mortal, one nobody anybody would miss.

Jean-Luc Picard. I'd said I'd leave him alone and yet he never left me alone, frolicking around the universe in his speck of a starship, always only a thought away. He could forget me, cleanly. He did not have the burden of policing his mind.

Time passed. I distracted myself. I played in the far edges of the Gamma Quadrant mostly, some place where they've never heard of Starfleet. Eventually my anger faded, and then came the day I realized it was gone altogether. Whether eliminated or buried, I did not care.

Only when the need arose did I slip back into Federation space, knowing he was in the neighborhood and shrugging it off. Who was he to me? A past curiosity, that was all. In sixty years he would probably be dead.

Sixty years is nothing to me.

And so it was that I abandoned all my interest in humanity, flicked it to the ground like the poisonous cigarette it was.

* * *

A little story you might find interesting. The setting? The Alpha Quadrant. The characters? Me and the closest of my associates, Q.

It was his turn to pick a place and he chose Alpha III. I complained, but I didn't get very far with him since I couldn't verbalize exactly _why_ I didn't want Alpha III, just that I didn't. He'd put up with my last choice, some underwater photonic spa on the other side of the galaxy—dull by all his standards—and so here we were. Alpha III.

The bar he chose was crowded and loud and colored lights roved everywhere. Blues and pinks and yellows flashed across our faces, an effect I supposed was meant to be stylish but was mostly just blinding. Worse, the bar was swarming with Starfleet cadets. I wished they weren't there. Not enough to unmake them or anything, but enough to blacken my mood. It's an unpleasant sensation, remembering humans exist. As I was scowling at them from across the bar, and thinking of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the worlds, Q handed me a drink and asked me whatever happened to that Starfleet officer I used to talk to. "The old one without any hair." The trouble with Q is I can never tell if he's staged all of this to elicit information from me or is just… serendipitously curious.

Either way, it was bound to come up eventually.

"Him?" I said over the music. "I haven't thought of him in fifteen years."

"No way! He was your favorite little toy!"

"Toys break, Q."

"Whoa. Now what I wouldn't give to hear more about _that_."

"Sorry. I've forgotten most of it."

"That's a shame. You know we were all so surprised you liked a human so much, and now you just don't even care. And you don't even know why!"

"I was bored."

"You're going to make me investigate, aren't you?"

There was a jolt of fear in my stomach when I realized he might summon Jean-Luc immediately to "investigate." After all, I had just declared I didn't care. As Q etiquette went, he was no longer my property. Up for grabs. And what would I do then, face to face with _him_ so suddenly, so out of my control? Would he turn to accuse me? Surely he would. And what feeble defense pointing at Q would be then.

I swallowed, and forced myself to relax, and reminded myself that whatever Q did I would play it cool and uncaring _as I was_. If Picard accused me, I would simply refuse to answer.

Q was grinning at me. These weak humanoid features; so telling if you know where to look. He beckoned with his index finger and one of the more sultry cadets strutted across the room and slipped into his arm. Whispering in her ear, he got everything out of her.

Such as: Captain Picard? No, Admiral Picard, and he was retiring next month. There were rumors of a forced resignation or some sort of fallout with the leadership, although they were having a big ceremony as a send-off. Also he was "_so_ inspiring and I would give anything to shake his hand and have you met him? I would _kill_ to meet him" and other such unhelpful nonsense that bubbles forth when you loosen up a human like that. _I_ never did that, for the same reason I didn't make a habit of reading humanoid minds. It was never interesting that way.

"Wow, look at that," Q said after he had shooed her off. He turned his attentions on me. "You really had no idea about any of that."

"No," I said.

"You just… got bored?"

"Yes," I said, and said nothing else.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Q didn't press the issue further than that.

But as the night waned on and I drank more and more, far more than I usually did, retaining my humanoid form to feel all the stupor and calm of a compromised central nervous system, to the point of actually _enjoying_ the flashing lights, I kept remembering something the cadet had said, despite trying to ignore all of it. That he was resigning.

Leaving Starfleet.

I wanted to throw a drink in Q's face for sticking that in my head, and for starting this whole charade in the first place by reminding me that Picard would die soon, way back when. One might almost say he was concerned for me, but probably he just wanted the laugh.

One thing I swore to myself, and I even drank to it to seal the deal: I wasn't going anywhere near that ceremony.

* * *

Which of course means I went.

In another life it was a day I had looked forward to, the casting off of Starfleet by the once-favored Picard, and so for nostalgia's sake it seemed imperative that I attend—even if just for the excuse to try out a human body again, and that old captain's uniform. Fifteen years had passed, plenty of time for indifference to have won out between us. That was what I told myself anyway. I would have a look around and I would leave. Who among the Continuum could fault me for that?

The ceremony had already begun when I appeared there, standing in the back of the room without fanfare or announcement. The building was an old Earth church, a place where humans like Picard used to worship beings like me. There were about four hundred persons of various species scattered around the pews, and yet the room wasn't half full. As music wafted from the orchestra pit, the lords of Starfleet paraded across the stage in all of their lackluster mediocrity. Grey heads, all of them.

And then Picard came out. Everyone stood and clapped, everyone but me. He moved slowly, carefully to his seat on the stage, which made me wonder if he'd had some sort of accident. He stooped more, had gone completely bald, all of those omens of impending death. At the age of eighty he had, what, forty more years left? Maybe less considering his mechanical heart. And the stress of command, too, would have its cost.

It was strange seeing him again. I had expected to feel something, some shiver up my arms, a pang of sadness perhaps. But I felt nothing. No desire to speak to him. Not even to let him know I was here. I was considering leaving when some man on the stage got up and rattled off a list of Picard's accomplishments. The man finished the list and moved on with some general statement about how much Picard had meant to Starfleet, how much they would miss him as a leader, etcetera, etcetera, but I wasn't following. I was back with the list, replaying it in my mind, just to be sure. No. It was definitely, _very_ wrong. And I wasn't just going to stand there and let them be _wrong_ about something like that, something so integral to the ceremony as the accomplishments of the very person they were meant to honor.

I strode up the aisle.

I heard a few gasps once they began to recognize me, probably from when I put the entire species on trial or something. "Stop, stop, stop," I said, and at my bidding the man at the podium went mute. Picard was watching me. I could see him in my peripheral, but my business was not with him.

"That's wrong," I said. "That's all wrong. You can't just list the man's accomplishments and leave out the most important one. Now try it again. I'll help."

The man began speaking, alarmed to be doing so. It was all over his face, and yet his voice did not falter. "Of course I neglected to mention Admiral Picard's most significant accomplishment of all, that of emissary to the Q Continuum. When the Q Continuum decided to destroy humanity, Admiral Picard, then Captain Picard, singlehandedly changed their minds by impressing the great entity Q, who graciously went on to plead humanity's case. If it weren't for the Admiral, all of us, all we know here and all we have yet to know would be gone."

"Q," said a voice behind me. "I think that's enough."

It was Riker. Pudgy and balding; time had treated him worse than Picard. He opened his mouth to say more, but never did, because I froze him in place. How many times I had wanted to do that…

"Go on," I said to the speaker.

"Q!" That was from Picard, who stood to his feet.

"I have no business with you," I replied without looking at him.

"Right, you don't. So be gone."

"Be gone? And let this travesty continue? No, _someone_ should intervene. There aren't nearly enough guests here, for one." I snapped and the pews were packed with various cadets in uniform, snatched from a nearby library. "And is this a funeral or celebration?" With a flash, a thousand streamers hung from the chandeliers to the rafters to the windows. Confetti rained over the crowd. "And the speech. The speech is the thing. Once we get that right, I'll be on my way."

Picard didn't miss a beat. "And are we to believe you happened here on coincidence? Or that you roam the galaxy arbitrating quality?"

"Where I am concerned, yes."

There were a few people who had stood up to leave. Without turning, I slammed the back doors shut. The windows, too, one after the other. _Pom, pom, pom_. I think I made my point clear, for the shirkers shrunk back to their seats.

Picard stepped forward, spoke at lower volume. "You said this was done, Q. You said you no longer—"

"Oh I'm barely speaking to you." For I had still not even glanced at him. He had noticed.

"Look at me, Q," he growled.

It amused me how he always dared to order me. Well, Riker dared, but only after taking cues from Picard. It was even more amusing here, in this room, after what I had just done, with such a larger audience than he'd ever had on the Enterprise. Jean-Luc Picard, still too brave for his own good.

My eyes shifted to his.

He was scowling. His age made his scowl that much more formidable; something about all the wrinkles. A single scrap of confetti had landed on his shoulder. "Please. Leave."

I folded my arms. Smiled. "No."

He seemed surprised by that answer, but like any good tactician nimbly came around. "If you wish to attend, you will attend as anyone else. You will sit, there. And undo what you've done to Riker."

"And hear him wasp at me? I don't think so."

"_I_ will wasp at you."

"And you do it so much better."

He inhaled shakily, angrily. "What do you want?"

I strolled to Riker, around him, relishing the tension and fear, all eyes on me. I tapped my finger up Riker's shoulder, his neck, through his hair then down to the other shoulder. I leaned against him and squinted at Picard.

"Isn't there a president of your little Federation? Seeing as you're the most important human in, oh, quite some time, I'm surprised he isn't here giving the speech instead of… this." I gestured to the man at the podium, who flinched away. In microseconds I located the President—on the other side of the planet, attending some soirée—and summoned him to the side of the stage. When he realized what had happened, he blanched.

"Oh you've all heard of me, have you?" I said with disappointment. More golden silence. I played with one of Riker's pips—four of them now—while Jean-Luc limped down the steps. The confetti flicked off his shoulder.

"Don't hurt yourself," I joked, but my smile fell the closer he got. He was entering my space now, and there was something about that I didn't like, something different than anyone else entering my space. I was leaning on Riker after all, and yet Picard, two feet away, felt the more palpable of a presence.

He spoke at a whisper. "I want you to leave, now."

I remembered what this was. What I was. I leaned even closer.

"You? You think you can ask _me_ for anything?"

He nodded as if he had understood something I had not meant to imply. "If you wish to punish me, Q, punish _me_. Not these."

I raised my chin and pushed off of Riker. "Punish you?" I wanted to say, but glared instead. Fifteen years. Fifteen years we had not spoken, had not even seen each other, and still we were stuck in the same old rut, repeating the same old game, over and over, nauseous, spent. I glanced at the streamers above, then at Riker, the President, the podium. I made a hard turn on my heels and left the room. The doors opened for me and shut behind.

He was right. Doing anything more would be punishing him, and I had not come here for _him_ at all. He had distracted me.

There was a wet bar on the lawn outside. The bartender skittered away upon seeing me. Was I on a 'Wanted!' poster somewhere? I was keenly aware that I should make my exit, that it would be the Q thing to do, but instead I poured a drink and downed it in one swallow.

The trouble was I was feeling something now, something much stronger and more permanent than a pang of sadness or a chill up the arms. And it irked me that I could not say what it was.


	6. Chapter 6

The lowest moment in Picard's life had been the year 2366 after the incident with the Borg. Locutus had controlled his thoughts and his actions, had destroyed him so thoroughly it had taken years to put the pieces back together. Counselor Troi had told him back then that the worst was over, that he would live the remainder of his life in control of himself—his mind, his body—that he would never feel such helplessness again.

She'd forgotten about aging.

There were obvious differences, of course. Instead of all at once, his mind was lost in bits and pieces as the memories faded. The loss of his captainship was not forced but strongly coerced, with the need for spry minds and malleable wills on the fringes of the Federation after the Dominion war. And it was not from the Borg cube but from Earth Picard watched his declining significance, watched his once-close colleagues adapt and move on without him.

That was not to say being an admiral was miserable. It was just different and less pleasant than being a captain. All the maddening bureaucracy, the near-inability to simply give an order and see something done. The politics, the rivalries, the arguments. There were moments when Picard was lying in his bed, staring at the dark, blank ceiling—or during one of the unending arguments, cold cups of coffee, Admirals politely insulting each other across broad tables—when Picard had regretted not accepting Q's offer.

He missed exploring that much. That he thought even Q worth it.

He had not seen Q once since the Enterprise. It seemed another life now, another person who had conducted those affairs. Now he walked places instead of transporting, and after hurting his hip in a skiing accident, he limped places too.

There was one factor involved in Picard's decision to retire and one factor only. The official explanation was that he was about the age to do so. The actual reason was Picard's distaste for compromise. An unsettling change had shadowed Starfleet in the last decade as the Federation morphed from a paragon of justice into a soulless war machine. Officers would do seemingly anything in the name of winning, even selling out on their principles. Not Picard.

The saying was, Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. Fading away was exactly what Picard wanted to do, to retreat to France and his brother's family, to study science or history in whatever capacity he could. He had not envisioned that his career would end in this way, with his _desiring_ to be ignored by Starfleet, but that was what the universe had become. Foreign. Something he could neither change nor explore and so something he no longer saw himself as much a part of.

He asked for a small ceremony. It was telling that no one in the leadership argued with him. He had not invited many of his friends beyond Riker, requesting that the others—Geordi, Worf, Beverly, Data, Deanna and so forth—visit him in France when he knew he would feel more at peace. It was not easy, fading away, but he was slowly coming to accept it, the move from power to powerlessness, from fame to obsolescence.

And then Q.

Q, who embodied power, who bookended Picard's most significant time on the Enterprise—Q like the turning of a lens threw his life into clear definition. Q, who had sworn they would never see each other again. Q, the single person in the universe who could give Picard a second chance.

Q, who was acting exactly as puerile as he always had.

Picard watched in stunned silence as Q fed Admiral Santos new words all in praise of himself. Apparently he thought he deserved full credit for Picard's career. He watched the way Q upgraded the ceremony, making it a more momentous occasion than if Picard had asked for a momentous occasion, an act that would be gossiped about among Starfleet leadership for years, knowing them. He saw Q's amusement at the chaos he was causing, his unflinching immobilization of Riker, his gleeful disrespect of the President. He watched all of it, and he couldn't help but become angry.

It wasn't about Starfleet decorum; to hell with all of that. Q had barged in without asking—and wasn't that always the problem? Not only did Picard feel belittled by Starfleet, he felt belittled by Q, who did not even find him worthy enough to dictate the terms of his own Starfleet-belittled retirement ceremony.

Q had left Picard with open scorn all those years ago. While Picard had wondered if that scorn would turn to bite him with a vengeance, he had never dreamed it would stew for so long. He was especially unsettled when Q exited the building, leaving Picard's request for substitutionary punishment hanging between them unanswered, the box unchecked. And how long would _that_ keep, then?

What was left of the ceremony was a disaster. Admiral Jacobs stuttered so badly presenting Picard with an award that Picard simply took the medal and seated himself, leaving the admiral standing there, hands still extended and pale-faced. What they didn't know, what they would never believe even if Picard told them, was that Q wouldn't be back for them. He never played the same trick twice. Yet they whispered and fidgeted as if in a sudden expression of Q's anger the roof would fall in. The president glared at Picard from across the stage. Their last meeting had not ended on good terms—an argument about the morality of trading medical supplies for war criminals. In front of twelve councilors, Picard had thickly implied the president was a snake. Today's development certainly didn't help their relationship.

When at last the ceremony staggered to an end with all the grace of a reanimated corpse, Picard wished he could slip unnoticed out the back door. He held himself in place, however, and shook the hands that shook his. Theirs trembled in fear; his own, in barely-suppressed rage.

Q had promised he'd stay away. It was as if he'd said it solely to get Picard off his guard so he could shock him all over again.

"Are you all right, sir?" Riker asked from the bottom of the steps. Picard welcomed the excuse to leave the line, descending as nimbly as his hip would allow him. They had not seen each other in four months. Considering Q, Picard was more glad than ever to have a friend nearby.

Riker's hand was not shaking.

"Perturbed," Picard answered, "that's all."

"I thought he'd stopped bothering you."

"I thought so as well. I should have known better. He was never beneath these tricks before."

"Well, I doubt your knowing would have changed anything."

"They think I did this. That I've been talking to him all this time." Picard leaned closer. "That's what the president thinks, I'm certain. That I planned this."

Riker frowned, a concerned expression, not what Picard had expected.

"What is it?" Picard asked.

"I was told he's out there, sir. Q."

"What?"

"Where the reception's supposed to be. I can have the Titan beam you out if you'd prefer to avoid him."

"Do you really think that would work?"

Picard unclasped his pips of admiralty from his collar, one other thing Admiral Jacobs had forgotten to do. He dropped those and his medal onto a passing pew as he started toward the door. "And it isn't 'sir' anymore, Captain. It's Jean-Luc, if you can manage."

Hundreds of people choked the aisle in the back, trying to leave but failing. If anything, more of them seemed to be coming inside than out. Fortunately when they saw what ex-admiral was pushing through them they made room somehow. Q, no doubt, was to blame for this.

Picard felt a thrill of adrenaline that caught him off guard. The only emotion he recalled feeling before a confrontation with Q was keen and bitter annoyance. He decided it was not about Q himself, rather the situation, which reminded him of the Enterprise. No paperwork, no committees, just the mission before him. There was pride, too, at the way the crowd parted for him—Picard, the only human in the galaxy Q ever remotely obeyed.

Picard broke through the crowd into the blinding flame of sunlight. Covering his eyes, he spotted Q at a bar on the lawn at least fifty meters away. Nothing seemed to occupy the entity's attention more than the drink in his hand. Odd. Considering the crowd, Picard had expected much worse.

They were jittery. He couldn't blame them.

"I'll take it from here," he said to Riker.

"With all due respect, _Jean-Luc_, I don't think you can order me anymore."

"Riker. Will. He's already made it clear…" Picard wasn't sure how to finish that thought, as Q hadn't made anything clear. "I have a feeling the worst is yet to come."

"I'd like to be there for it, if you don't mind."

"If you're trying to—"

In a flash of light, Riker vanished.

It went downhill from there. All of those onlookers who were scattered around Picard—those who probably thought themselves braver than the others to be baring themselves—they hurried back inside the cathedral. The doors groaned shut behind them. Picard watched wryly, thinking better of the idea that they saw him as a hero. More accurate, some virgin offered up to a god's fury.

There was no other person in sight. A dozen glistening skyscrapers hedged the field. Q was watching him, though it was too far away to see any specific expression.

"Enjoying yourself, Q?" Picard shouted. The question bounced off the skyscrapers.

Q looked away, sipping his drink as if that were his reply: yes.

Picard saw nothing else to do but approach. The reception area was a tragedy: empty tables, melting ice sculptures, platters of food stagnating in the heat. And Q, not giving a damn, just as always. Picard had already noted this in the cathedral, but he was impressed again by how very young Q looked. It gave him the uncanny feeling he had slipped into the past.

But Picard had a job to do. This wasn't the time for nostalgia. He was still wearing the uniform.

He barked out a second question, and a third.

"Where is he? What have you done with Riker?"

Q raised the tumbler, turning it in his hand. "He's in here. I've made him just as small as I think he is." After a beat, he added, "I jest of course." He gestured upward with his eyes. "He's on the Titan. Orbiting. …They've locked a transporter on you. Oops. Not in an orbit anymore."

This news was delivered so calmly Picard wasn't sure whether to be concerned or not. "And where is he now?"

Q shrugged. "About ten hours away, maximum warp."

The band of tension around Picard's shoulders started to relax. There'd been no telling which Q he was dealing with: the Q playing nice or the Q willing to make a point no matter the cost. At least this Q didn't seem to be on any sadistic killing mission. "Was that really necessary?"

"You would have brought him down here."

"_All_ of it, Q! You being here. You flaunting yourself like this! You said you would never show yourself again."

Q studied the tumbler, unfazed by Picard's tone. "That's a different question. Necessary? Nothing I do is _necessary_. And I told you why I'm here. They were getting _me_ all wrong."

"Yet here you are still. Now make your point and leave."

"_Moi_? _Mon capitaine_! Or should I say _mon amiral_? _Ou mon citoyen_?"

"_Va te faire foutre_."

Q laughed. "_Touche. C'est tres bien!_ And how are you, Jean-Luc? I should have asked you that back there. I'm sorry."

"Angry."

"Anger." Q licked his lips, seeming to ponder the word. "I thought I was the only one who felt anger."

"You must feel something, Q, to go to all this trouble."

"Did I ever tell you I like the way you say my name?" Q slipped behind the bar and washed out his glass. "What are you drinking now? Not Earl Grey still?"

"If you think you're going to charm me into letting you stay here, you're wrong."

"I don't think you'll _let_ me do anything, because that it isn't how it works. Why are you acting like this? Relax. Get out of that uniform, why don't you? You're done with all of that."

Q flicked his hand and Picard's uniform changed into something tan and casual, something he might wear at the vineyard in France. It was a simple yet firm example of what Q had said: there was no letting him or not letting him, no matter what their relationship used to be.

Picard glanced back at the cathedral. The bold black doors. The tower bell swaying in the breeze. "Very well, Q. If you're not going to leave, I am."

"Oh you can't tell me you honestly care what happens to them?"

"I care very much."

"After that interment you call a ceremony? What was that medal they gave you, for commendable service? That's the best they can do? In some cultures that sort of mental laziness is a crime. I should blight them all."

"You will do no such thing!"

Q nodded slowly. "It's good to see you're still excitable. But you needn't worry. I had my fit up there, and I'm calm now. The picture of politesse. You can even call them down if you like, I promise to behave."

"As you promised I would never see you again."

"I never promised. Besides it was more about me never seeing you than you never seeing me."

Over a decade had passed, yet Q was speaking to him as though it were days. Worse, Picard was encouraging him by responding in kind. He needed to divert the course of this conversation, and soon, or else deal with the consequences of his resolve beginning to crack.

"You're so _old_. When did that happen?"

"About the same time as everything else."

"Does it hurt?"

"Does what?"

"Your hip. You hobble like a Risian crab. Would you like me to fix it?"

"No."

"I should. You're painful just to watch. Haven't you seen a doctor?"

"I have. It's healing now."

"And how long will that take?"

"Is there something on your mind, Q?"

"Q," Q repeated, mimicking Picard's frustrated tone. "If you're worried about them watching us, they are. Thousands of them in these skyscrapers, crowded at the windows. No one's allowed onto the field lest they go the way of Riker. Still afraid of being seen with me in public?"

"Is that what this is about?"

Q picked almonds from a bowl of nuts, splitting them with his front teeth. "So you're telling me I should go, are you? You want your reception and I should—" He gestured with an almond half. "—_va te faire foutre_?"

"That is exactly what I'm saying."

"I hear the words, but they sound very rehearsed and frankly I'm having trouble believing them. Then again the lack of conviction in your voice could simply be an indication that you don't expect results. But I know a way to tell the difference! I'll give you another chance. This time, Picard, if you ask me to leave, I'll leave. Be careful, though." Q held up his finger. "I will vanish on the spot."

Picard was inclined to believe he would. After having wished to speak to him more than once, he realized he would regret it if Q did. But here? With so many inconvenienced—so many lives at stake? The decision seemed obvious; the needs of the many prevailed.

"Don't do this now, Q. Not in the middle of Starfleet."

"That's strange. I didn't hear a command to leave in there."

"If I ask you to leave, will you return? Say tomorrow?"

"No."

"You're asking me to choose between my retirement reception and you."

"I'm merely asking if you mean what you've been saying all this time."

Picard had no more room to argue. Q had turned the criticism onto him. It was either admit he was a hypocrite or goodbye to Q. He pulled out a bar stool and sat.

Q eyes lit up. There was a twist of a smile just beginning to form before he started with the almonds again. "You're not betraying any loyalties, you know. If Starfleet had the chance to sidle up to me at your expense, I'm sure they would."

"Is there some expense I should know about?"

"I already told you they were safe."

"Then perhaps we could go elsewhere? I see no need to remain here."

Q gestured to the tables. "And let all of this food go to waste? You can stop pretending this isn't how you wanted it. You put on a spectacle for Starfleet, _and_ for me, but you're glad I came today."

"Under other circumstances perhaps I could say 'glad.' The emotion is not nearly so positive. You're making this as difficult as possible for me when it's the same to you if it wasn't."

"So I'll go then?"

"That isn't what I said."

"Thirsty?"

Q set a drink on the bar. Ice in some clear liquid. Then he leaned forward so that their temples touched and whispered in Picard's ear, "I am making this difficult."

He vanished.

Picard's stomach dropped. He turned and saw Q at one of the food tables and felt such a flood of relief it disturbed him. He needed to control himself. He was supposed to be getting rid of Q, for his own safety, for everyone's. Even if he was temporarily deviating from the plan, that _was_ the plan.

Picard sniffed the drink Q had poured only to set it aside. Vodka. He poured himself a whiskey—better for his nerves—and made for the table where Q was eating.

He felt the adrenaline again. Now he understood what it was: an anticipation fueled by years of wondering, of _what if_. When he reached the table, he did not sit. Not yet.

"You told them you were the shining moment of my career," he said.

Q was licking the stickiness off his fingers. "I was."

"No, you weren't. You intervened once or twice."

"You mean the once or twice I saved your life? Or do you mean the Borg? Or the anomaly?"

"Both of those your creations."

"I? Create the Borg? Jean-Luc." Q bit into a strawberry, tossed the green away.

"You may have told yourself you were improving the ceremony, giving me some voice I didn't have before, but you never asked me what I wanted. You did what you wanted. And you know good and well that in doing that, up there, they'll remember this day for you, not for me."

"History tends to remember the person who's still around."

"I mean your display, and you know that. Don't argue a point I'm not making."

For a moment Q looked like he might bite back. "What point are you making?"

"If you wanted to attend, you could have done it as inconspicuously as anyone else. If you wanted to change anything, you could have asked."

"I'm not anyone else. I couldn't have just attended."

"Then you shouldn't have attended at all. You weren't even invited, Q."

Q turned his palms upward. "And I humbly ask for your exoneration. There. Do we feel better now?"

"I might consider that apology if it had been at all genuine."

"Would you like me to get on my knees?"

"I know you think me stubborn. Belligerent even. You once asked me why I can't talk to you as I would anyone else. The truth is I found it difficult to talk to someone who lives in a fantasy world, or at best, is so wholly removed from the consequences of his actions that he needed never consider his actions at all. I know it surprised you when I did. I know it chafed you when I told you how poorly you'd come across."

Q didn't reply. He was just silent, just watching Picard.

"You kill without thought. The memories of those who have died under my command still haunt me. You rearrange people as though we were trinkets on a side table—Riker, _me_ more than once… when even as captain of the Enterprise, even with that authority, although I know you never recognized it, I always minded people's personal desires first."

"I can see you've given this a lot of thought."

"I've had a lot of time to."

"But you've not considered the most important thing. My interest. Jean-Luc, please. It's been fifteen years. Let's not renew some dreadful argument we both grew bored of. Sit. Drink that… whatever it is you're holding. I'm trying very hard to play nice."

"As am I."

"Pontificating is a terrible place to start. Sit."

Picard complied. A plate of food appeared in front of him, but he didn't touch it.

"I do live in a fantasy world," Q said. "Everything I am is fantasy to you. Would I be interesting to you otherwise?"

"I didn't mean what you are. What you do."

"Where I come from they're the same."

"So every one of the Q behaves exactly the same as you?"

"The Continuum? I won't talk about the Continuum."

"Why not?"

Q picked at his food and said nothing.

"I'm not afraid of being seen with you in public. You mistook that for what it really was, that being seen with you would be a tacit approval of your behavior, would impugn my credibility as captain of the Enterprise, and yes, I feared for my credibility. I feared for anything related to my command. That was the fear you saw. It wasn't you; it was how you behaved. But as you said, perhaps those are the same."

When Q didn't reply to that, Picard moved the subject along.

"What made you come?"

"If there's one question I loathe it's that one."

Picard sighed, grasping for a rephrase. "What was it you were doing before this?"

"I was on a planet full of monkeys, soaking my feet. I was cascading through a string of Andorian ice tunnels. I was warming my hands against the heart of a star. What does it matter to you what I was doing? Something exciting. Something you couldn't comprehend."

"But you saw I was retiring."

"Oh, that's what you're getting at. No. I was told two weeks ago. I haven't been watching you. All of that promptly stopped. No, it's a coincidence, my knowing."

"Your uniform's out of issue."

"Is it?" Q said in a way that meant he knew.

There had been so many lulls in the conversation, one after the other, that Picard decided he had better get it over with. He picked at his food before pushing the plate away. "There's something I should tell you. The reason _I'm _here. I would… consider that offer you gave me. If you extended it again."

The air felt electric. Q made only the slightest movement, folding his hands in front of him, and yet Picard could sense of wall of energy behind it. It was something deadly, something dark. As if Picard had split an atom and created the bomb.

"Of course you would," Q said. "You've nowhere else to go. And what am I, supposed to take Starfleet's sloppy seconds?"

"I was only informing you. I would regret it if I hadn't."

"Well I'm glad I could help you to live at peace until the end of your days."

The sarcasm stung. Picard felt the need to defend himself. "You spoke of my retirement when you offered. That I did not forget."

"After which I made it very clear I had lost _all_ desire in that direction."

"I regret that conversation, Q. I wish... things had not ended like that."

"Of course you do. You never saw me again."

"It isn't that. More that you were obviously upset."

"Don't you _dare_." The word had weight. It swelled in volume, reverberated in the air so that a flock of birds on the other side of the field took flight. Picard remembered how many hundreds were watching them, and perhaps so did Q, because he leaned forward and continued more quietly, his finger stabbing the table, "Don't you dare feign to know my _feelings_ _on_ _anything_."

Something about the threat in Q's eyes reminded him of how icily Q, in their last meeting, had told him he didn't care if he lived or died. Picard wished he could leave. A catch-22: too dangerous to stay in Q's presence, too dangerous to risk any sudden movement. He was beginning to feel fortunate things had not worked out.

"I could have made you ruler of the Alpha Quadrant. I could have made you a god. I could have given you anything you wanted, things you couldn't have wanted, things you haven't imagined, and fifteen years later we would only be starting. I wouldn't have left you out to dry like this. I wouldn't have sent you skulking back to France."

"You're right. I suppose I must live with the consequences of that decision."

"Don't pretend to be taking this easy. It's obvious you're desperate for me."

Picard was startled only momentarily. "It's obvious you are still bitter even years after the fact. Desperate? _You_ came to me, Q, let's not forget that."

"I can see it was a mistake. I can see my mere appearance gave you a less-than-favorable impression."

Picard finished his whiskey. He didn't trust himself to answer wisely.

"The truth is I should have never picked you up as a hobby. The Continuum mocked me for it. The jokes they tell, you should hear them. They're very funny. More than once I've considered going back in time and warning myself."

Picard murmured, "You should warn me as well." In the middle of the sentiment he realized it was a mistake, that it would do more harm than good, but by then the words were out. He gleaned the worst from the suffocating silence that followed. Then the meticulous, almost shaky quality in Q's reply.

"Maybe we should both go back so as to avoid all incredulity. Then again what would warning you do? It was I who bent down. I who shaped the mud."

Several things happened in rapid succession. Q was out of the chair and sliding his hand under Picard's chin, despite the table in between them, which must have disappeared. Had it? Picard felt himself prodded upwards as though he were some kind of animal. When he resisted, Q's fingers became searing hot. He hissed and stood, fumbling with the chair, though even then Q's pressure did not relent. He realized what Q wanted and refused to give it, lifting his chin away from the entity's hand, keeping his eyes fixed on a cloud above.

"The great Captain Picard. Decomposing into the annals of history. Who worked so hard to escape daddy's vineyard only to retreat there tail tucked between his legs. Look at me."

Picard's eyes settled on Q's. It was over so quickly he hadn't realized at first his eyes had moved against his will. Trying to move them back, unsuccessfully—that confirmed it. Fury. Picard's arms grew light. He tried to retort, to bite back at Q's smugly understated smile, but his jaw would not open.

"So saggy, your eyes. Does it frighten you seeing them in the mirror each morning? It's no wonder you latched onto—"

Q staggered backwards, touching his jaw where Picard had struck it. He looked at his hand and saw blood there, then he touched his face again, seemingly stunned.

It was Picard's turn now to sport the smug, understated smile. He shook the pain out of his fingers, waiting for whatever punishment would come. Something a hundred times worse, he suspected. But he didn't care. He would do it all over again, just for the sight of Q's face under his fist.


	7. Chapter 7

He'd hit me. I should have seen it coming, but how could I see it coming? He'd never been so feral before. I suppose he'd had his fits in his younger years, such as that fight with the Nausican, but he was old now and who could have predicted he'd age backwards?

It was an oversight not pinning down his arms. I'd expected holding his jaw would be warning enough. No mortal had ever dared hit me like that, without invitation or provocation, and so my first thought upon lurching backwards was that I would kill him. My second thought was how many hundreds of humans had just witnessed this embarrassment, but I fixed that as soon as thought it, snatching the memory from all of their minds: two thousand, three hundred and twenty-nine of them. Poof. My third thought was the stinging in my lip, the blood in my hand.

I looked up at him, and I let him see all of my anger.

He was favoring his hand as if that decrepit limb was of more worth than my perfect, ageless face. The infuriating thing was he didn't look at all worried.

"What an incredibly," I spat blood onto the grass, "stupid thing to do." My mind seemed foggy, numbed by shock.

"I'm not afraid of dying. I'm not afraid of age. It was you who were terrified when faced with it." He announced this as though it were a rebuttal, as though I had said something to this effect when clearly I had _not_.

"What _ever_ are you talking about?"

"This was not in the terms of our meeting. The picture of politesse. That's what you told me."

"Terms, what terms?"

"You crossed a line, Q. Were you in my place you would not stand for this. _I_ will not stand for this. This unfettered, unwarranted arrogance. And I don't deny you can shut me up for saying it."

I wished the blood and swelling away. I was done enunciating through a fat lip. "Yes you'd love to die now, wouldn't you? The hero, the martyr, cut down by the malevolent Q. That's always been your narrative, hasn't it?"

"Release me."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Release my legs! Or if you're going to retaliate, do it. Hit me. Or whatever your equivalent is. Let me free or have this over with, now." He held open his arms. I was too angry to laugh, and so astounded by his invitation that I considered it. Considered giving him so much pain his mind would bail into permanent insanity. The thought was not unpleasant.

"If you only knew what you asked for."

"Another lecture on your superiority? Because I would rather die now than prolong this conversation, and since you won't allow me to walk away…"

"I wouldn't kill you, you pathetic, balding ape. I would torture you. That's proper retaliation."

"As I tortured you with the split lip you've since erased? Or do you mean the torture of my rejection fifteen years ago?"

I was so livid I could not think until I saw the wet of his tear ducts, until we were so close he could not mistake my whisper.

"I am Q. Infinite. Ageless. I saw the birth of the universe and I will see its end, and I will outlive it. You are a speck on a speck on a speck of my existence. Your wailing about me killing you… You've already died, mortal. They're lowering you into your grave."

Although I'd frozen his legs, I'd left his arms free. I was hoping he would try to hit me again. He moved quickly, but he was no match for a Q. I caught his fist and slammed it to his side. I spun him, catching both of his hands behind his back. He gave a little grunt of surprise. And then I pulled him into me and leaned down into his ear.

"A pity you're not a Q. You'd be so much better as a real challenge."

He tried to break away, wiggling, but I yanked him against me again and he went still. His breathing was quick. I turned to his other ear. "I did this for you. All of this, for you. Remember this when you tell them how cold and vindictive I am. If I really wanted you, Jean-Luc, I could have had you."

I released him. He took off without a passing glance.

This was why I had come. This was what I had stayed for. A better memory of him than the last, a memory where_ I_ was the controlling vote. He was so blotchy and weak, like a shrunken vegetable. And so unremarkable without a uniform. I think I finally understood what the Continuum had been laughing about all this time.

Thus was our ending. A clumsy collapse of an ending, an ending which bore too many similarities to our last ending for my taste. But at least in the similarities I found comfort. I found reassurance that there could be no other ending between us.

* * *

How long until the guilt struck me? Not long. Days maybe. I was strolling through the hydrogen rainforests of Altari Four when the sun hit the underbrush just right and I realized… I had done it all wrong. I _had_ crossed a line. It was exactly as sudden as that, too, as if my subconscious had been mulling on it, had found it indigestible and vomited it up. I couldn't reason myself out of it—the guilt, I mean. It grew in me with all the conspicuous vibrance of an Altari hydrogen flower. Our quarrel went beyond him being human and me being Q. There had been moments when I had gone out of my way to be spiteful.

Several days later and the guilt was still there, glowing, growing, more bold and astonishing than ever.

But I was so sick of dealing with him. That more than pride held me back from fixing anything. Exhaustion. The ennui of treading the same ground again and again. I was worried, too, worried that if I tried to move beyond him I would stumble, or worse, that I was incapable of moving beyond him. An irrational fear, but it haunted me just the same. Perhaps I should cut my losses, embrace the guilt forever.

But he had a space in my head I desperately wanted back. I needed to forget him; it wouldn't work unless I did. I needed nothing between us either positive or negative, a neutrality to be lost in the noise. I could do that, couldn't I? There had been a time not fifty years ago when I'd never thought of him at all. How hard would it be to go back?

Suddenly nothing felt more important. I told Q our weekend plans were off. I went to a place that was good for thinking, the heart of a bilious, violet-colored nebula tucked away in a hollow of the galaxy. Quiet there. Spreading thin my essence, I mapped out the possibilities. Everything on the table, nothing out of the question. Even visiting him again, if that's what I needed to do. Even falling on my knees and begging for clemency. This was the difference between now and his retirement party, and this was how I knew it would work. I thought of _everything_. Things so disgustingly humble they would probably unmake me. No more hiding from the Federation. No more flinching at the very name of Jean-Luc Picard.

It was he who gave me the solution, a tactic I had once accused him of using on me. _Courtesy_. Was anything more impersonal than that?

First, I healed his hip, and I healed it better than any of his primitive doctors would have done. It would last him well beyond the grave. Second, I gave him something I knew he would enjoy. It was an extravagance he would probably donate or destruct rather than use, but it was the meaning more than the object itself that mattered. I trusted he would weight it more heavily than my words.

It was painful, remembering that exchange. I had said so much about his insignificance. I had pounded him with it. I needed to tell him it wasn't true; it was the last thing from true. Once I had put it into words, then and only then did I feel free.

My third and final gift. Honesty.


	8. Chapter 8

Picard was stargazing in the family vineyard on his second week of retirement when the ease in his step startled him. He tested his leg, first putting a little weight on it, then all of it. One minute later he was jogging through the vines. It was the next day at the insistence of his sister-in-law Marie that he had his hip checked out with a medic. When the scans showed neither signs of injury nor operation—not even the normal wear and tear evident in a man of Picard's age—he had no doubts about what had happened.

For the second incident, or _intrusion_ as Picard liked to think of it, Commander Data was visiting. They were dining at a café in Vesoul when the waiter relayed a message from Marie saying they had better come home immediately. Dessert was abandoned, tea left to go cold. Marie met them outside the villa with a communiqué from Starfleet marked classified. Picard keyed in his command code and the insignia vanished. Under other circumstances he would have been amused his code still worked; he would have placed a bet on Starfleet changing it faster. But what the PADD revealed drained his humor dry. It was a ship. A ship in Earth's space dock, slender and obsidian against the cloud-swirled oceans. And beneath the image of the ship, a block of text.

"It appeared three hours ago," he read aloud, "in a great flash of light. Other ships currently in dock were shifted aside to make room. The ship is listed in the registrar, _Prospero_, commissioned this year, today. Ownership under… Under my name."

Picard dropped the PADD onto a settee and smoothed his hand over his head. He could feel the dazed eyes of Marie and the steely, knowing eyes of Commander Data. "Dammit, Q," he whispered to the wall.

"It would appear so," Data said.

"If I wanted a ship, I would have requested one."

"Unlikely, sir. Interstellar ships are rarely commissioned for civilians. Since the advent of the Dominion war, some private ships were even seized—"

"Yes, thank you, Data. I know."

It took them a full twenty minutes to brief Marie on Q, even with Data's crystalline recollection of the facts. Another five minutes to convince her that, no, no one was going to disappear to Sherwood Forest, the Borg were not going to attack and they were all perfectly safe here otherwise. Data was wise enough not to mention how many species Q had tormented or humans he had flippantly killed. Q had not visited Picard once in the last fifteen years, and so with some credibility Picard could reassure her that the next fifteen would prove just as uneventful.

When that was settled, when Picard was exhausted of hearing, speaking, even _thinking_ the name Q, he retired to his flat separate from the main house. There the reality which confronted him was worse than the one he'd been tired of, so much so that he longed to return to the simplicity of merely describing Q. What to do now? What should be said to Starfleet, first of all? A _ship_. He could hardly believe it but there it was, plain as day on the PADD. What in the hell was Q playing at?

Data knew about the incident at the retirement ceremony. Everyone in Starfleet knew. There was surveillance footage, though Q had blotted out the audio. He had blotted out the punch too, not surprisingly. And so while Data knew about the visitation from Q, knew that words had passed between Picard and Q culminating in the cancellation of the reception, he did not know the full extent.

How much worse it had gotten _after_ Picard had asked Q to reconsider! It was as if Q had appeared just to reject him, as if he knew Picard might have changed his mind by this point and no better time to leap! At his retirement, where it was a good bet he'd be vulnerable as well as desperate. The entire conversation had been a trap. Once Picard had gotten home and calmed himself to a few glasses of brandy, he had purposed to forget about Q, just as surely as Q had declared he would forget about him. Back to focusing on the now, on what he could accomplish on his own. Back to treating Q like the demon spawn he was. Intelligent, yes. Powerful, yes. But no emotional maturity to speak of. No interpersonal skills. No grace.

And then this. These "gifts." Reminders of the power Picard might have taken advantage of had he played his cards better. For clearly that was Q's intent. To taunt Picard, flaunt what had been could be no other interpretation.

A _ship_. More like a petty reminder of Q's reach.

Picard poured a glass of wine and collapsed into a chair in front of the fire. The glow of the flames soothed him, as did the tapping of Data's fingers on the corner console.

Data had been generous enough to pen the reply to Starfleet, whole paragraphs of well-worded, noncommittal nothing which might delay the need for a decision. They claimed to want use of their space dock again, but considering a new docking port had appeared and the old docks still serviced the same amount of ships, Picard wasn't sure what they were anxious about. Perhaps they missed the legroom. Perhaps they wanted to push someone around in order to feel some sense of control again, a knee-jerk reaction to Q's whims Picard was intimately familiar with.

"It's like before," Picard said toward the fire. "Like the first time we encountered him. He has me under a microscope, wants to see me jump through hoops like some dancing chimp. And what if he never tires of it? What so-called gift will I be given next? He healed a fracture in my hip against my express wishes, were you aware of that?"

Data replied that he was not.

"No, I don't suppose I told anyone except Marie. Now she's putting two-and-two together."

Data keyed off the console and seated himself in the opposite armchair, fingers woven together, expectant. He had not much changed since the _Enterprise_. He was wearing the informal Starfleet reds and three full pips instead of two and a half. Grey streaked along the right side of his hair just as Picard remembered from the future, or should he call it the present now? Back when Q had sent him spinning through time, "saving humanity."

"I should be angry. On the _Enterprise_ I was angry. Now I suppose, now that it only affects only me..." His eyes turned to the flame. "What universe is there free of Q? I choose that one. Meeting him has been the single most unfortunate event of my life."

"Were it not for you, sir, Q might have committed xenocide."

"If he was telling the truth about that."

"Q has exhibited questionable moral judgment on many an occasion, but I have no record of him ever directly speaking a lie."

"It would be impossible to catch him in one."

"Would not the burden of proof lie with us?"

"Commander, whose side are you on?"

"The side of the facts. And yet I apologize if I appear unsympathetic."

"No. No, your candor is appreciated. But if you could be a little less candid in Q's defense?" Picard smiled, hoping Data recognized the joke. Data gave no indication besides one quick nod, which could really go either way.

"I have one confusion, sir."

"What is it?"

"If you are upset your hip was healed, you may simply fracture it again. I would not suggest this, but there are doctors on Qo'noS who may prescribe it as a matter of honor."

"It isn't 'sir' anymore, Data. It's Jean-Luc."

"I do not mean it as a statement of rank."

Picard sighed. He didn't feel up to arguing. Nor did he feel up to explaining why a mended hip bothered him so. Too much of it was entangled in the past, too much about _Q_, and Picard had never been comfortable talking about Q. Even now he felt exposed. He set the wine aside.

"I should probably get some sleep."

* * *

"Did you send the message?" Picard asked Data the next morning.

"I did not, sir. I was waiting on your clearance."

"Good. Wonderful. I appreciate you writing the reply, but I don't think we need it anymore. You may inform Starfleet I don't want the ship. I don't care what they do with it."

"It is registered under your name."

"And they can treat it as any other civilian ship which docks without permission."

"I do not think there is a precedent."

"I'm sure they'll figure something out. I accept the gift of my mobility because apart from some lunacy I can't help but accept it. But this ship, I will have nothing to do with. I will not dance for his leisure."

For a moment Data's eyes remained intent on Picard, thinking. Or was _processing_ the correct word? Any other friend might have peppered Picard with questions, drowned him with concern instead of allowing him the space to think. Picard was grateful for Data's restraint.

Later, he felt a sink of guilt. They had planned this morning to see a presentation on a promising vaccine made from Juniper berries. It was more Data's field of interest than Picard's, but since Picard missed even the aura of scientific discussion he had readily agreed to accompany him. They were walking to breakfast, gravel crunching underfoot, when Picard halted.

"Good lord, it completely slipped my mind. I'm sorry, Data."

"Sir?"

"We were supposed to leave for Greenland. And I overslept."

Data showed no surprise. On the contrary, he seemed prepared with an answer. "I am not sorry. The concerns of a friend are as imperative as my own. You were obviously lacking the focus needed to attend. And I have always found it more efficient to deal with the reality one is given rather than the reality one had planned for."

Another moment of clarity, compliments of Mr. Data. So many of those on the _Enterprise_. Picard smiled sadly.

"That's an attitude I could stand to adopt."

* * *

Starfleet didn't like Picard's answer. You'd think they would be glad of the acquisition of a new, fully-functional and probably state-of-the-art ship, Picard grumbled to himself, and as if they had heard him thinking this from afar they sent down the ship's full specifications, or as much as could be determined of them. The ship was simply impenetrable. Scans couldn't breach it, lasers couldn't bore into it, and neither could one of their officers walk through the front door. It was secured with what looked to be, as far as they could tell, a DNA-encrypted lock. They had tried using a sample of Picard's DNA—he didn't ask what lengths they had gone to to get _that_—but to no avail. Their engineers concluded the DNA needed to be standing there, alive, in the flesh, and requested that Picard get himself to the space dock immediately.

Picard sent back a one-word answer. No. He might have added something about how they shouldn't be so sure it was his DNA they needed, but since he agreed with them on that point he didn't bother. He knew they wouldn't force him. The mere fact that Q had instigated this along with the worrisome notion that he might still be hovering around was enough to wither their annoyance into polite, pithy observances.

The ship might be dangerous, they said. He told them they should move it then. But they couldn't move it for the same reason they couldn't scan it or breach it; it was not responding to any of their technology and short of physically pushing it they didn't know what else to try. Then leave it there, Picard replied. Didn't they have the same amount of docks as before? Yes, but it was a security matter now and in fact they had been operating for the past few days with the entire wing shut down, diagnostics being run on everything. Every port had been shifted aside to accommodate the new one. If anything so much as a self-sealing stem bolt was out of place they could lose most of the dock.

Picard felt an eye roll coming on. He managed to send back a now four-word reply.

_I don't want it._

Eventually he signed the ship's registration over to Data. He didn't care if Starfleet destroyed it. Knowing their opinion of Q, he guessed they eventually would. In the meantime he trusted Data would be as resourceful as he was discreet, not to mention Data was a Starfleet officer which put the matter wholly in Starfleet's jurisdiction, leaving Picard to enjoy the remainder of his retirement in peace. He was burdened only with the knowledge of two things. First, that he owed Commander Data a rather large favor. Second, that Q was still out there to torment him.

At least that was Picard's theory. As fervently as Q had claimed they would never see each other again, the claim had not been reliable in the past. After every good happening, and more than a few bad ones, Picard couldn't help but wonder. Most were small things, laughable things, things Picard upon reconsideration knew Q would have never bothered with—such as their vineyard producing a bumper crop or the discovery of a family heirloom amid the dirt. But there were large things as well. The Federation Archeological Institute awarded Picard with the honor of Best Archeological Innovation although Picard had not touched archeology in years. Surely that was more than enough proof to bolster Picard's hypothesis; it was certainly more typical of Q's grand posturing, a gift Picard would find difficult to refuse and impossible to ignore. And then a member of the board of archeology contacted Picard to explain the award was the most obvious thing in the world due to Picard's diplomatic work in reopening Tegus 3. It had been four or five years ago Picard had done it, but findings from the ruins of Tegus 3 were just now being published (and awarded for innovations of their own) so that Picard's contribution could no longer be ignored.

A month passed, and nothing. Two months. One night he dreamed Q had reinstated him as captain of the Enterprise, had created a mission tailor-fit for him, something vaguely related to archeology and diplomacy. Picard fought the charge tooth and nail, but the whole of Starfleet was begging him to accept, not to mention his crew. Everyone was there, even Pulaski and Crusher, who had never served at the same time. The true oddity was none of them seemed to remember or perceive Q, not even when a fourth seat was added to the bridge on Picard's right hand and Q ambled from the turbolift and slouched there. On Q's collar were three pips now, not four…

Picard awoke with a start. He made a cup of Earl Gray and tried to forget the dream. It had been three months since the infernal _Prospero_, three months and not one interference from Q so blatant as those first two. He'd had his suspicions, but they remained just that: suspicions. It was as if his subconscious had been speaking to him through the dream, saying, _This. This is what an act of Q looks like, since you're forgetting_.

Picard did not like being wrong, but it was becoming more and more blatant that he was. Data had stopped contacting him to ask with meaning-laced subtext if everything was well. Picard had been forming a second hypothesis in light of his first one standing still, that the ship and the healing of his hip might have been meant as apologies. It fit with the structure of an apology as it addressed two of the weaknesses Q had particularly mocked him for: his foolishness since leaving the Enterprise (the _Prospero_) and his age (the hip). Perhaps Q wasn't continuing to point out Picard's impotence but was, instead, trying to address it? For some uncontemplated reason, Picard liked this explanation the least. He rarely dwelt on it.

* * *

He had never planned on acknowledging the ship, but after four months of questioning he cared more for answers than what he had to do to get them. He asked Data where he might be able to find it, _if_ he might be able to find it. The commander replied they had still been unable to move the _Prospero_ from port.

It was under the pretense of lending a helping hand—literally, where DNA-encryption was concerned—that Picard beamed up to the dock. No reception was waiting for him when the transporter room materialized around him. Only Data was standing there, holding a glass of champagne which he offered to Picard.

"It's your ship, Commander," Picard replied, "you should be breaking this across the hull, not drinking it. Not _me_ drinking it. Where's your glass?"

"I thought it imprudent to damage the carpet. And as I do not drink myself…"

Data led the way toward _Prospero_'s port while Picard asked what the Starfleet gossip was about him. Without hesitation Data replied, "The consensus is you are a stubborn old man. The consensus is also since you have an omnipotent entity at your disposal, it is wiser to let you remain as such."

"Hardly at my disposal. Though they wouldn't believe it if I told them. So that's why they've left the ship here, hm?"

"I believe there were multiple factors in the decision."

They passed several of Picard's old colleagues, exchanging niceties before continuing on. No one would admit it aloud, but Picard sensed the reason for his coming here was as obvious as an alert light flashing overhead. _Q, Q, Q. _He could practically feel its warmth.

Docking port 91 was as much an advertisement for Q as Picard probably was. Sleek, low-lighted, organic… essentially nothing like the standardized ports around it. Only a month had passed since Starfleet had reopened the wing—so said Data. Except for the occasional cadet wafting past they were alone.

It was strange thinking Q had created the port. Stranger still as a mere appetizer for what was to come.

A green square glowed to the right of the hatch.

"I suppose this is it," Picard said, but before he pressed his hand to the panel he added, "You said there were multiple factors in this decision. Do you have any orders you should tell me about, Data?"

Data did not blink. "None that I should tell you about."

Picard thought he understood. "As soon as I open this, you're going to knock me out, aren't you?" He didn't wait for an answer. It wasn't fair to force one. He knew how thorough Starfleet could be, how loyal Data was in return, and so turning back he pressed down his hand.

The hatch rolled open. A purple light glowed from within, staining their faces. Picard moved inside, feeling less the excitement of discovery than the urgency for privacy. After Data followed, the hatch shut behind them.

They had encountered a similar technology on the _Enterprise_ when a man from the past had stolen a time capsule from the future. Rasputen? Picard couldn't remember the name. They'd been unable to scan the interior of his ship too, and so it was a solid bet Starfleet could not overhear them, even with Data's comm badge.

"Now would be the time, Data."

"To knock you out," Data acknowledged the joke. "I _was_ given orders, sir, but only to see the ship's removal from port. That is assuming I can pilot the ship, which is assuming a great deal. I understand these orders are primarily due to the ship being in my ownership. Otherwise I was told to accede to your wishes, even if you wish I return the ship to you."

"Fascinating," Picard said.

"I believe Admiral Atchinson trusts your judgment, as do many of the others."

"That's," Picard searched for the word, "interesting to note. But don't you think some of that has to do with Q?"

Data frowned. "I have considered this. I have also considered Starfleet may be curious about the ship's technology."

"I've considered that as well."

Picard continued forward.

"May I ask your intent in coming?" Data said.

"I suppose I'm looking for something." He added before Data could ask, "I don't know what it is."

A door swished open. Picard startled, his stomach dropping as if Q had just appeared in front of him. Beyond the door were three identical corridors forming a T. He scanned these branches quickly as if he might find Q standing here or leaning there. But there was no one. "Naturally," he thought.

He started down the right branch, which opened into a modestly-sized dining and observation lounge. Its style matched the docking port outside, low-lit and peaceful, like a grotto. The next branch led them to a room not unlike Picard's quarters had been on the _Enterprise_. It made sense Q would choose something familiar there. The branch continued further, and at Picard's request Data went on ahead while Picard traced his steps back and took the third branch, to the left, which he had guessed would lead him to the bridge. He wanted to be alone for that one. The door did not open automatically. Like the main hatch, it seemed to require his touch.

He pressed his finger into the sensor. And then there it was.

The bridge. It was surreal seeing it. He had thought of the _Prospero_ so little he had no preconceived ideas, was simply experiencing it fresh. It was half the size of the _Enterprise_'s bridge and almost completely bare. A single chair. A side table. A low shelf on the back wall. The most stunning feature was the ceiling, a dome made entirely of transparent aluminum. Were it not for the space dock, obscuring three-quarters of the sky, the room could be lit by starlight alone. It was a bridge very much like one Q would dream up, a viewing room more than a command center, comfort more than utility.

The _Prospero_. He had not let himself really analyze the name. Perhaps in the name lied his answer, with the old man whose claim to the throne had been stolen from him, forced to live out his days on a secluded island plotting revenge. Was that how Q saw him? Shipwrecked and powerless? The similarities between Q and Prospero's sprite Ariel were also impossible to ignore.

There was a box sitting in the captain's chair. Grey, unwrapped, an afterthought. It was tightly sealed, budging only when pressured a certain way. Picard could smell its contents before he saw them, loose leaves for tea, Earl Gray. He knew there had to be more.

He poured the leaves into the lid and—_there it is_—a yellow card on the bottom of the box. A few lines of calligraphy. Picard knew it was Q's handwriting though he had never seen Q's handwriting. It was too formal, too neat. He held the card to the starlight.

_Jean-Luc_, it began. Picard shut his eyes and started over.

_Jean-Luc. You're the best human I've met, and you're too good for rotting in some French villa like you haven't been an explorer all your life. Go outside. Look around. There really is so much more._

Picard put the box aside. He sat in the captain's chair. It was comfortable, more comfortable than his chair on the _Enterprise_ had been, damn Q. He heard someone at the door.

"It is a large ship for the amount of passengers it would accommodate. There are beds for six people and six separate quarters, all as large as the first one. A luxury vessel at first glance, and yet there are two laboratories fully equipped with Starfleet's current research technology. The alien technology pertains to privacy, speed and communications, and I could not decipher it. I did discover a panel which suggests at current consumption the ship's power would last for 2.5 millennia. Even at peak power consumption I believe that number would remain impressive."

"Of course it would," Picard said.

He waited for Data to tell him he was wrong about Q taunting him. Wrong about Q caring. It seemed so obvious now, what this ship was for.

"Have you located the ship's piloting mechanism?"

"What?" Picard said. "Oh. Not yet."

Data's eyes shifted to the opened box of tea.

"It's an apology," Picard said. "Not just that, the whole ship. And I don't think he cares whether or not I accept it."

Picard pressed his fingers into his eyelids, because he didn't know what to do. The ship was beyond worth. He couldn't destroy it, at least not without lengthy contemplation. He couldn't give it to Starfleet, not with technology such as this, so overtly ahead of its time. He didn't feel right using it either.

He was getting old. And paranoid. For he saw now what a fool he'd been. All signs pointed to Q being gone forever.

The guidance systems on the _Prospero_ were automated. Picard had only to turn on the computer and say where he wanted to go and, with a negligible margin of error, the ship went. They located an available dock orbiting Titan, a private port where the ship might elude the Federation's interest. The more Picard interacted with the ship's technology, the more he wanted to scold Q for ever bringing it here. The potential for abuse from a species so recently marred by war…

He had thought the Q were more responsible than that.

Picard asked Data to transfer the registration back to him. He made sure the ship was locked tight and booked a passage back to Earth. It was as if he was operating on autopilot, not really thinking about these decisions, simply doing what felt right until he could mull them over at some later, more lucid time. Along with the certainty of Q's absence came the ability to act as he wanted to, no pride, no need to make a point.

When he arrived home, he put Q's note in a chest with some of his other keepsakes from the _Enterprise_, and marveled again that Q had given him a ship, of all things. Didn't that just epitomize his arrogance? Always Q presumed to know what Picard wanted only to land shockingly far from the mark. Picard did not need to explore anymore. Nostalgia was a power enough for old age.

* * *

Within the year, Picard was using her regularly.

He rationalized it at first with a dual-pronged argument. First, he had not much else to do with his time, and second, why not exploit the _Prospero_ for the betterment of mankind? He took a few scientists with him, choosing colleagues who knew as little about a ship's underpinnings as he did so as to ensure everyone was on the same page about researching what the ship could show them and not the ship itself. On these expeditions, advances were made in astrometry, cosmology, exobiology and so forth, after which Picard no longer needed to rationalize anything. He starting thinking of the ship not as a personal gift but as a consolation prize left over from years of Q's bullying. It felt a better fit, this mindset, a reminder of Q's true nature and how they were all better off without it. It also had the desirable side effect of Picard not feeling in any way indebted for his present happiness.

And he was happy. Some days he enjoyed himself as much as he had on the _Enterprise_. The _Prospero_ was as fast as any warship, as comfortable as any luxury liner, and the shields and sensors allowed him to survey nearly any phenomenon he wished. More and more often he took her out by himself, gone for weeks at a time. Marie worried, but after a few instances of him returning home in one piece she seemed to forget to. He brought back souvenirs for her, holo-images of some of the events he had witnessed.

One such event was a sun going supernova. In one second's time the star consumed all the matter had faithfully nurtured for two hundred million years. A wave of energy, a massive surge of light which sparked through ancient planets as though they were specks of lint. For anyone else it would have been a remarkable but not unheard of phenomenon, worthy of data collection for academic study but not much more than that. For Picard, it stirred something profound within him. It was like stepping aboard the _Prospero_ for the first time, like finding the note in the box and realizing he'd been looking at all the recent events in his life from the wrong angle. It was something he could no longer ignore, an idea fueled by a conviction he'd had since staring up at the stars as a child. He was an explorer. He needed to explore.

He went back to Earth, remaining there for as long as it took to see the old sights again and to correspond with anyone willing and available. He ate a comfortable dinner with his family. Packing his things late that night, he set out. When they asked him how long he would be gone this time, he didn't say. He didn't know himself.

He set his destination according to the star charts, and then all that remained was getting there. But the _Prospero_ would do that. He could rest. Reading, research, whatever would pass the time.

Every week he scheduled a meeting with himself and every week he kept it. These were held in the observation lounge over a breakfast of fresh fruit and a cup of Earl Grey. Their purpose was to review the ship's progress, determine how long it would take for her to arrive and how long it would take for her to return home if turned around immediately. He asked himself every week if he wanted to press on, giving each and every doubt a fair hearing. Thirty-one times now he had answered the same. One more week.

He was confident, but that did not mean he didn't worry. At night when his mind settled into sleep the tendrils of doubt pushed their way through. He would remember the conversation he'd had with Riker a few weeks ago over the comm, his old friend painstakingly trying to understand him, and failing that, trying to argue him out of it. The conversation with Marie had been tender and tear-filled. His dreams would be restless, friends he'd spoken to since leaving, friends he'd avoided, a parade of faces not unlike what one might experience the moment before death.

He dreamed many times of the _Enterprise_. Q was there, still a member of the crew.

In one such dream, a Klingon ship had opened fire on them. Picard ordered Q to board the enemy vessel to put an end to it. He expected no issues. Q was omnipotent and rarely encountered resistance, even from Klingons. When Picard hailed the ship to see Q's progress, Q appeared on the view-screen, angry. "Wake up," he said.

It shook Picard. The bridge felt like the inside of a bell which had just been struck. His vision blurred and focused again. "What?" he asked, wondering what waking up had to do with the Klingons.

"Wake up."

Q appeared in front of Picard and slapped him. Picard recoiled…

And in that motion hurled himself off the bed and onto the floor. He groaned with the impact, his sheets tangled in his legs. He could still hear Q's voice as plainly as though he were standing in the room, so _real_ he couldn't relax. "Computer, lights."

He scanned the room, exhaling a shuddery breath when he saw.

Q was standing in the doorway. Glaring.

Picard had thought this would happen. He had even prepared himself for it, but for the life of him he couldn't remember a single thing he had wanted to say.


	9. Chapter 9

And so once again I find myself in the tedious position of having to explain why it is a being who can control anything, be anything, _do_ anything would discover himself doing the very thing he wanted to do the least. It would seem I have a penchant for torturing myself. I would have to talk to someone about that, maybe keep a journal, research medication. Later, though. In that exact moment I was too distracted to consider the ramifications of any of this; Picard was there, here, in front of me, and I demanded to know what he was doing. Alone. Half a year away from Earth and still going strong. There was not even scientific research that I could see, unless he was doing it all in his head.

When he didn't answer I repeated the question again, more slowly, more furiously. "What are you doing?"

He pushed himself back onto the bed and touched his forehead. He was still waking up. Humans had to do that, had to will themselves to full consciousness, the helpless little dears.

"Would you care for some tea?" I said. "A long shower—shall I wait outside? Maybe I should return at a more convenient time, because please, don't let me interrupt your morning routine."

"It isn't morning." His voice was coarse. "It's the middle of the night."

"It's always night out here."

"It isn't _my_ morning."

"I've asked you a question."

He looked at me. Not at all intimidated. Not at all surprised. If anything there was a glimmer of amusement. "Tea, please. You know how I take it."

Thoughts of why I tortured myself flitted past a second time. I was angry, angry that he was making jokes at a time like this and angry that he knew it made me angry. As if he wasn't having some sort of crisis. As if _I_ wasn't, humoring him like this. I knew I shouldn't be here. I knew if I stayed too long it would become more messy than it already was. I started talking, and quickly.

"I don't need you to tell me what you think you're doing, here's what you _are_ doing. You've pointed this little ship I gave you toward that little planet I showed you based on those star charts I left you. The ship will reach it, because I created it to reach anything, except you'll be long dead by the time it arrives. The further out you go the longer it will take you to return until your age catches up to you and you're quite literally in the dead zone. Add to this another layer of madness—even if you were to somehow survive this journey, defying all the genetic predeterminates of your race, the planet won't be there. I told you the system was going supernova before anyone from the Alpha Quadrant would see it, and I specifically used those words. Well? Please correct me if I'm wrong. For once I'd _like_ to be wrong. I'd like to think there's some trace of sanity left in that fetid, worming brain."

He went to the replicator, probably for some tea but I was speaking over him.

"If it's suicide you want, why don't you just do it? This is a waste of a perfectly good ship."

"A waste that did not exist before you gave it to me."

"I gave you a ship not a coffin. It's a reflection on _me_ for you to behave like this, did you ever think of that?"

He turned, tea in hand. "It's good to see you, Q."

I dropped my hands to my side, straightened. "So that's what this is. Let the record be amended, you're not insane, you're pathetic."

"No. No, I do want to see the planet again."

"Knowing all the while you won't get to."

He met my gaze, not denying it.

"I think I prefer my first impression. That this was a risible attempt to tarnish my reputation. But slashing at your wrists on the gamble I was looking in? I thought you had less time on your hands."

"I… Q…." He seemed not quite ready to speak, but I waited. I would out-patience him if that's what I needed to do.

No, he was definitely not suicidal. Too kempt, too recently-shaved—and so horribly _deformed_, now that I was looking at him. Wrinkled, frail, shorter than he used to be. If I thought about why, I felt a pang of existential horror which was relieved only by reminding myself I was Q and need never think of it at all.

He sat on the edge of his unmade bed. There his face fumbled through the expressions—puzzlement, worry, urgency, resolve—and just as he opened his mouth to speak I answered him.

"No."

He frowned. "No to what? I don't recall a question."

"Will I whisk you off to that planet? No. Will I rig this ship so you get there faster? No. Will I reconsider what I told you years ago? No, no, _no_. I wouldn't even be here except you accosted me. Fifty light years that way I was demanding the cessation of a chemical war when a speck of light flickered in the night sky, and I looked up, and it was you. What's the saying? Any closer I would have bit you."

"It's unfair!"

His shout startled me.

"Unfair that you mock me for this display. Yes, display. I have no way of contacting you. Of course I resort to extremism, you left me nothing else. _You_ certainly come and go as you please."

"_We have nothing left to say to each other. _I gave you a ship. Not for suicide, though if that's how you wish to use it. I gave you that bone, the _femur_ your doctors botched. There was a time I had to twist your arm to give you so much as advice, and now I don't even know what you're asking for. For me to be human? For you not to be?"

"I'm asking for a little time."

"From the man who wasted thirty months of his life."

"So that I could speak to you. I'm asking you to listen to something other than the sound of your own voice for once." It was a shout. He lowered his volume, a wise move considering the heat in my eyes. "Don't you think it's interesting, Q, that we're always arguing? In fact, I struggle to recall one conversation that did not devolve into this… this bitter prattle."

"'Don't you think it's interesting,' he says, as if we're lunching. What does arguing have to do with anything?"

"It's something I've noticed."

"Have you? Have you also noticed we've never whispered to each other in a crowded room or talked entirely through the use of metaphors?"

"We've never _talked_."

"What a fascinating little fantasy this is! Tell me, Picard, do you often imagine new and complicated ways for us to pass the time?"

"Don't skirt this. You yourself once asked me to simply talk."

"I will not entertain this."

"Of course you won't. You're a frightened child."

I had nothing more to say to him. He was a fool, wasting what little attention I had given him only to insult me. He would have done better on his face begging. My very appearance was an immense kindness, and if he would not recognize it—

"Q, wait, don't." He grabbed my arm.

I looked at the place where his skin touched mine. I couldn't remember a time he had ever touched me. His hand was corpse cold. The top of it, blotched with age.

"Don't leave," he said. "Not yet."

I laughed, part chortle, part cough. As if him grabbing me would do anything. As if _asking_ me would do anything. He had forgotten his place, forgotten what our relationship had only ever been. How had Data once put it? A master and his beloved pet? And that was at its zenith.

My eyes lifted to his, and I vanished.

His reaction was not what I would call entertaining. His hand, the one that had clasped my arm, fell slowly to his side. His shoulders slumped, and he put his tea away, and took a sonic shower, and changed into his day clothes. Besides the ambiguity of his shoulders slumping, I could not detect any mourning over the time and effort he had wasted. Admittedly I wasn't looking too closely. I had instigated this ship debacle and I felt a strange and stalwart duty to fix it.

There were a billion ways I might go about it. I might fence the ship into one particular area. It would be tricky without fencing a lot of other ships with it, but if that's what needed to be done. Or I could take the ship away. Someone might give him another, but I could threaten the Federation with a plague if anyone dared—let them deal with him. I could reason with him, but that would require talking again, the thought of which chaffed. I could threaten him. There were ways to do it without talking, but in the process wouldn't that undo all the progress I had made in trying to end things nicely? I could leave him to the consequences of his decision. He'd certainly earned them. In time he would rot away into a skeleton on the bridge or be torpedoed out of the sky by any one of the more advanced civilizations along the way. Except no. I couldn't be at peace knowing he was charging to his death,_ waiting _for me to intervene. …Although he was going to die either way. Out here alone or back on Earth. Earth! I could ground him on Earth, put some sort of something in the air that the scientists wouldn't detect but which his body would require to function. By the time they figured that out, his age would have caught up to him. Or, if I was going to micromanage it as much as that, why jump through the hurdle of enforcing any punishment? Why not simply adjust his brain and have it over with, rid him of the desire of ever venturing into space again? I could set him up with the most beautiful, intelligent, riveting person on the planet, and he would bask in happiness until the end of his days. That wouldn't be cruel. No one could say that was cruel. If anyone did say that was cruel I could unmake them. Except then he wouldn't really _be_ Jean-Luc Picard anymore. In essence_ I_ would be the one killing him.

That was the problem at heart, the exploring thing. It was so integral to his being. We had that in common, he and I. Because I would not enjoy being caged either.

He was being interesting now. He'd gone to the bridge and was running a scan in a fifty light-year perimeter from the point in space when I had appeared. No guesswork for this Magellan; he had asked the computer for the timestamp. Searching for M-class planets with a priority on unusual chemical activity.

This show of protest, futile though it was, amused me so much I didn't care about whether or not he had earned another interaction. I appeared on the ship's viewscreen.

"You're as small-minded as ever. It's P-class. And did you think I would be there when you arrived?"

When he saw me his chin tilted up with what I knew to be nervous energy. I was wearing the judge's garb, pale skin, plummed lips. My fingers touched to form a cage.

"Q," he said, an attempt to fill the time while he scrambled for something useful. "I was searching for a planet I could plausibly visit. And yes, I hoped you would be there."

"I'm not sure if I should be flattered or file a restraining order. Speaking of restraining orders, you will not be permitted to stray beyond Federation space again. I'm sorry but that's how it's going to be."

He took two steps toward the screen. "And how do you plan on enforcing that?"

"I haven't quite decided yet. I suspect however lenient or harsh you find my enforcement will be directly correlated to how much you do or do not test its limits. Though I don't know why I bother. You don't have of a track record of cooperation."

"No, I don't."

"Then for your sake I hope age has wizened as much as wrinkled you."

"In some ways you'll find me more stubborn, not less."

I leaned forward. "Oh but it goes both ways, _mon capitaine_."

In that instant, every star in the vicinity burned through their billion-year fuel supplies. No longer able to contain their own mass, they exploded. All of them. Even at this proximity it would have taken minutes for the shockwaves to reach Picard, so I urged them along. They bounded and rebounded off each other, creating a turbulence which would have certainly destroyed the ship had I not my finger on it. The hull of the _Prospero_ did not so much as flinch, even as the waves rolled over it.

We did not need words to exchange meaning. He strode to the panel and pressed a few buttons, concern shifting his features. He was wondering how many life forms I had just killed in that exercise. There was no way of telling now. He understood my threat just as I understood the gamut of his emotion: dismay, disappointment, surprise.

I had always had a weakness for surprising him. Even better was when he tried to hide it, just as he was trying very hard to do now.

When at last he spoke, his voice was coarse as it had been waking up. What I expected him to say was this: "Q, was that really necessary?" My turn to be surprised. What he actually said was this:

"Come inside, Q. Please."

I stood, and stepped to the viewscreen, and when I came out on his side I was wearing a Starfleet admiral's uniform, all up to date, my hands clasped behind my back. My expression was a void. If I was the slightest bit entertained, I did not want him to know it.

"Was that necessary?"

There it was, just a little late. I didn't answer.

"You were negotiating a ceasefire and now that system is gone, I presume?"

Still nothing. Let him ask something we didn't both know the answer to.

"I suppose this is meant to scare me back to the Federation. I suppose the implication is you're going to massacre even more. _You_ massacred them, Q, not I, and I do not hold the guilt for the tantrums of another. If I continued on and more were to die, you would still be the one killing them."

"So certain. You cling to your certainty, thinking it gives you power. I don't care if you feel guilty. The simple fact is they're dead because I'm annoyed, and until I stop being annoyed more will die. The only thing you should care about is you happen to be the one person who can un-annoy me."

I could see how much this was disturbing him, how little he had expected it. Yet what had he expected? Was I meant to embrace him with open arms? Humble myself to his every whim? He was living in the past.

"I should make you beg me for their lives," I said.

"You have the power."

"What's interesting is you won't beg me of your own accord. Billions remain dead for your pride."

"I will not acknowledge that logic. I have no power over you."

"Tell that to the children," I blew as if extinguishing a candle, "gone. Don't you want to take the chance you might change my mind?"

For a moment he looked like he might. "Whatever you're going to do with me, you're going to do it. Before I had some influence, but you've made your point. I don't now."

"You do have influence. You decide how many more stars I do or do not destroy."

"No more."

"Is that a promise to behave?"

He looked at me, a look that grew more and more intense, his eyes more and more wet, until at last he blurted out, "You must wonder the reason I came all this way."

"To lure me."

"To talk to you. Without us arguing."

I laughed.

"Please. Q. For one hour. It's the same amount of time you once asked of me."

"There's a very distinct difference between that hour and… this."

"Yes, I haven't your leverage."

"There will be no barter. The verdict is in effect. You will go back to your Federation and there you will stay until you die drenched in the devotion of your family and friends."

"I will agree to that, without resistance, without contempt. _If_ you give me one hour. That's nothing to you. You, the immortal. Think of it as one of the games you used to subject me to, or do you think you would fail?"

He made an interesting case. Not the part about me failing—I could do anything I put my mind to. The part about immortality. I owned every hour until the end of time, and look at all the months he had wasted in this ridiculous appeal. He was going to die, very soon now. To _not exist_. I didn't like thinking about it, had never liked thinking about it, but ignoring it now felt cruel. The dying man's last wish. A person I had once called friend, no less.

I stepped closer, forcing him to look up at me. "You don't know what you're asking for. This is not what it was. You've crossed to the other side, and I'm different here."

"I have no illusions that our relationship has not radically changed. And that you're anyone I can understand."

I started to smile. "But you think I'm still prone to flattery."

"You're difficult to predict. When I began this venture I could imagine you seeing me and looking away. A few times I thought you already had. I'm lucky you're here, much less considering the offer."

"And more flattery."

I considered telling him exactly how many sentients had died in the explosion, just to toss in another variable, to see how he would react, but this was Jean-Luc I was speaking to, not some chew toy of a species I would never think of again. He was, for the lack of a more nuanced expression, worth something.

"What I don't understand is what you're hoping to gain."

"Closure."

"Ugh, how dull."

"Very well. I'm hoping to right a wrong. Or at the very least make the attempt."

"You think you can trick me, Jean-Luc? It won't happen."

"Is that a challenge?"

"You would hear it that way." I inhaled dramatically. "A game needs boundaries. If I consent to one hour, one hour is all I'm consenting to. And when we are done you will remain in Federation space, no more hysterics. Agreed?"

"Yes. As I said."

I held out my hand. "No arguments from me."

"One hour. An Earth hour."

"Is there another?"

As if he were afraid I might change my mind, he shook my hand with one solid thrust. He had such confidence in my word. Something else I used to be fond of.

I released his hand. My eyes did not leave his as I turned my palm upward and snapped. It was suddenly humid. We were on Earth, France, on the graveled courtyard outside his little villa. His eyes swarmed to take it all in.

"No. Take us back. Q, you heard me."

"If I say 'no,' will that mean we're arguing? Very well, I abstain from replying."

"I never intended for us to leave the ship."

"If your heart was so set on it, you should have put it in the terms. That's something you learn, playing games as long as I have."

He was sullen and silent. Presumably so as not to argue.

"If it makes you feel better, I wasn't leaving you the ship anyway."

I took in a deep breath, smelling mint, oregano… and something else, something citrusy. "You make wine here, don't you? Maybe your sister-in-law will offer me a drink, if you won't. Do you still call her that when your brother's dead?"

I started toward the building, all too ready to stop when he called out, "Don't. I mean I'd… prefer it if you didn't."

I turned back, giving him a look to say: So entice me otherwise.

"This way."

He led me to a smaller building in the opposite direction. It was difficult to spot in the pinking dusk. Not a single light was on. A bat swooped over his head, there and gone again.

He went in first, not holding the door open for me, which he apologized for, explaining he needed to turn on the lights. I heard him sneeze. I soon learned why: the air inside was musty and cold, and dust coated every surface. A dead bug lay upside-down in the corner. Cobwebs laced the stair railing. I contemplated going on like this, watching him sneeze and fidget with his belongings, embarrassed over a dirtiness which would surely worsen the further in we delved. It would be entertaining. He'd certainly put me through worse, back when I'd had my hour.

But the truth was I wasn't nearly as rude as he was. So I willed the whole place clean and had it over with—a simple trick of pushing matter back in time about thirty weeks or so.

He acknowledged this with a nod, but did not thank me.

"It's been some time," he said.

There was a silence here, almost as if he'd forgotten I was in the room, the way his eyes lazily took in everything, all just as he'd left it. Perhaps he didn't know what to do with me now that I was actually standing next to him. I didn't rush him along. Whether we talked or didn't talk didn't matter to me. Well that's not entirely true—it would have been easier if we didn't talk. The sound I made leaning back into the wall must have roused him.

"Red or white?" he asked.

"Whatever you're in the mood for."

"There's a fireplace in there. If you want to warm the room."

Look at him, playing host.

I slumped off the wall. The room he had nodded me into was a study of some kind. Long bookshelves were cluttered with knick-knacks from Starfleet and artifacts crumbling with age. I glanced here and there to light the lamps and get the fire going, and then I examined the books. Classics. Shakespeare. Poetry. Dull.

Something in the corner caught my attention. I opened an oak chest and rummaged through its contents until I found it. The note I had left him. Smiling, I read it again, but by the time I was done reading it my smile was gone. _The best human I've met. Too good for rotting. Go explore._ I took the note towards the fire. I flicked it towards the flames, except only my wrist made the motion. My fingers did not release it. Curious.

In the end, I folded up the note and left it on the mantle.

I was slouched in the chair when he came in, two glasses in one hand, a bottle in the other. "I didn't know you slept, Q," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"You look like you're falling asleep."

"Sorry. I'll try to look more interested."

I felt the tiniest pinch of guilt as he poured the wine—red. I had thought myself _not_ rude moments ago. He handed me a glass and asked, "What is it you do? I don't think you've ever told me plainly."

"I amuse myself."

"Besides that. I know you don't only do that."

"I doubt you'd understand any of it."

"Then describe it in some way I would understand. Surely your superior intellect can handle that." He sat in the chair opposite mine.

"All right," I agreed. "_Things_. Things I get bored of. Things too boring now to recount."

"You said you were trying to stop a chemical war."

"That's right, I forgot. I should have led with that."

"I've seen firsthand you can be quite the philanthropist when you're in the mood. Are you really going to leave that planet destroyed after all that effort?"

I smiled, and I took my time with that smile, multi-tasked it, trying the wine for the first time. A little watery, a little withered in the aftertaste. "Is this the best you have?"

"Feel free to adjust it."

"That's not what I asked."

"No, that isn't my best. I wasn't going to waste my best on you only to have you dislike it."

"I like this not arguing. I feel very… respected."

"Why did you name the ship what you did?"

He had obviously come prepared. The way he blurted it out, he must have several questions at the starting gate, lined up in a row. I wondered how I felt about this hour devolving into an interrogation. I could put an end to it, but could I do it without arguing? At least the question was innocuous enough. "Shakespeare, obviously."

"Could you elaborate?"

"To be honest I didn't really think about it more than that. Ariel. A storm. An old man doing something important before he died. You can fill in the blanks."

"How did you know I'd want a ship?"

"I agreed not to argue. I did not agree to answer every question you posed."

"So introduce some other topic."

"Where in the rules am I required to talk at all?"

"Don't be difficult, Q." He put his wine glass aside. "It's an hour of your time. Time you control. You can have it back when you're done with it."

"Which is why it's more accurate to say it's an hour of my attention."

"Yes. Talking."

"Or listening."

"Both."

"I don't want to appear argumentative, so I'd like to make it clear I'm pointing this out from a sincere belief that you'll find it as ironic as I do. Within this very hour, you told me I was a bad listener."

"When?"

"You implied I love the sound of my own voice. It _is_ a lovely voice, but I don't think you were speaking literally. Now, let all here hold witness. I've offered to listen to anything you want to tell me."

He looked skeptical. "I had to pay dearly for this hour."

"You don't even want to lecture me? You used to love lecturing me."

"What was the purpose in giving me the ship, the _Prospero_?"

This was absurd. I fell back in the chair, fingers pressed together, staring at the ceiling. I was prepared to ignore him for the duration of my stay, no matter what question he threw at me.

"I was an ass, Q."

My eyes dropped to his.

"I know it was years ago. I know I've said as much already. But I wanted something back then, and so it bears repeating now, now that I have no hope of changing anything one way or the other. It's the truth. I was arrogant, plain and simple, and I'm sorry."

I had joked earlier about wanting to see him beg, but I disliked having begging _forced_ on me. Unable to leave. Unable to verbally stave it off. I plucked up the wine glass and stood. "You know after all of that? I think I want a white."

The wine cellar was on the far side of the kitchen down a short wooden stairway, a large room in proportion to the rest of the cottage. I was aiming for his "best wine," but there were dozens of bottles and I didn't know where to start. There was no special case, no markings besides the labels. The minds of Picard's family were dangling next door like ripened grapes, swollen with information. I found the name of the wine and found the bottle next. I poured a glass.

It wasn't very good. Not because it was watery like the last one, but there was so much pepper in the aftertaste. "You like it strong, do you Picard?" He was standing at the bottom of the stairs.

"You should aerate it," he said.

"I did aerate it. You mean it's worse than this?" I drank from the bottle, then spat it on the stones. I did him a favor and poured out the bottle too.

He watched this sadly until it was done. "Someone somewhere would call that… would call that a form of arguing."

"Arguing is verbal. Arguing would be me disagreeing with that sentiment and saying I just did you a favor, which I would never say, not in this hour. Was that really your best? The wines I could show you…"

"That was Marie's opinion of best." He stepped past me, and I couldn't help but feel a little exposed as he held aloft a different bottle. "_This_ is mine."

He knew I had looked into her mind. Worse: he knew I had avoided looking in his. How very _special_ he must be feeling right now. The only way I could seize superiority again would be to scour his mind immediately and reveal what I saw, but I would be revealing my defensiveness in the same stroke. I couldn't let him know that I cared.

I _didn't_ care.

He poured me a glass and I went through all the steps of smelling it, agitating it, examining it against the light before I drank. I was glad for the space to regroup.

"Good," I said.

He seemed surprised. "Really?"

"Really. It's jammy, smooth on the aftertaste, hints of scotch and tobacco. It's much better than hers."

"I'll tell her we're agreed."

"Not agreed-agreed. It's about average to what I'm used to."

I could feel him staring at me though I was turned away. My skin turned to gooseflesh, a vestigial and thankfully-invisible human response to threat. I did not want to be standing there. I had thought I could control myself, but the slightest hint of vulnerability had jarred me into the past. I was having flashbacks to the Enterprise, of all places. More than once the wine cellar nearly flickered into the bridge. Nothing he could perceive—yet.

I needed out. I decided honesty was the fastest way.

"I'll tell you what I do besides amusing myself." I swilled the rest of the wine. I couldn't look at him. "I didn't always. Not when you knew me on the Enterprise, I mean. But lately. Since we talked last. I've committed myself to the Continuum. Don't think prison, think spiritual, monks in a Franciscan order. Communion, fasting, self-flagellation, meditation, silence, there are thousands of these sorts of rites, though I'm using words you can understand and they're much different than that. I had fallen out of favor with them for far older and far greater reasons than any sort of so-called immorality you've accused me of. You know me only as this… this body. When we Q exist, really exist as we always have and always will, there are cravings akin to a human craving for intimacy. Yet it's an analogy as inadequate as it is disgusting. It isn't about bonding with anyone else, it's about the universe. _Everything_. Sinking into the tarn of time, drifting just beneath the surface of what is real. Living there. Whole centuries and never coming up for air. When you're there it is not so farfetched to believe we created all of this. We certainly maintain it, and that's just by showing up, that's before we reach out and touch anything.

"I'm speaking nonsense, I'm aware. Your language is useless for describing this, not that it's been pressed upon to describe anything so complex as this before now. The point is it's my natural state. Every century or so I like to go back to it. I spent most of the last year there. I know that doesn't make sense to you either. To be _out_ of time and yet experience its passing. But at least I've attempted what you asked, to describe it in a way you might comprehend. Simply, it's bliss, withholding nothing and nothing withheld. I was angry when I went to them. I'm not angry anymore."

I walked away, because there was nothing else to do. I had wanted to remind him how different we were? _I _was reminded, and I was beginning to forget how he had ever talked me into this, why I did not just force him to obey, this mortal, this chaff on the wind. I would dip in and out of the water and he would be gone.

"Don't ask me for anything, Jean-Luc," I said at the top of the stairs. And then I left him.


	10. Chapter 10

Q continued up the steps until he was a shadow in the doorway, then gone, leaving Picard in the cellar alone with his thoughts. _Don't ask me for anything, Jean-Luc._ The statement seemed haphazard, unattached to any statement made either before or after. One could assume Q had aimed it into the larger context of their conversation. It certainly made more sense there.

So Q thought he was trying to wheedle some favor out of him. It was probably true. Picard had crossed quadrants in order to talk with Q. He had apologized twice now about the same incident. He clearly wanted something.

It must be tiresome being in a position where you had everything to give. It must be frustrating being petitioned all the time. For a moment Picard considered complying with Q's request out of sheer pity. Only a moment. It wasn't that he wanted exactly what he wanted; he wanted them _both_ to have exactly what they wanted; or, in the likely event of a conflict of interest, the least they could give each other was an explanation.

_Don't ask me for anything_.

Not even for the knowledge of what was really going on?

He found Q sitting in the same chair as before. Funny how he'd had a handful to choose from and he'd picked Picard's favorite spot. With less than thirty minutes left on the clock, Picard set his wineglass out of reach before seating himself.

"I had no idea," he began, "about the Continuum. That that was what they were to you. You always spoke of them so coldly, as though they were… something other."

Q's eyes did not leave the flames. "Bitterness. It's what happens when one knows one must do something and does not. One begins to blame everyone but oneself."

"One _must_ do something," Picard repeated. "You must associate with them?"

"Of course not. I'm Q. I could ignore them for eternity and remain exactly as you see me now. But for my… oh you don't really have a word for it. It's a craving every millennia or so."

"That is something I will never understand. Living a millennia."

"Try millions of them."

The fire burned lower along with their antagonism. Q wore a silence no longer buoyed by annoyance but by a genuine desire to think. Well, Picard could not afford to let him.

"And yet I do understand the desire for community with your own kind. With those like-minded." Here it came. "The one thing you've told me which I am still puzzling over is this concept of committing yourself to the Continuum. You imply this requires all of your time and attention, and yet you admitted to be conducting affairs in the Delta Quadrant when you saw me. It seems you may do both? That it is not really _committing_ yourself, in our understanding of the word?"

Picard expected an excuse either vague or "too complicated to comprehend," perhaps a claim that Q had planned on returning to the Continuum immediately if only Picard had not gotten in the way. It was not like Q to remain silent upon the accusation of dishonesty, but that was exactly what he did. Simply stared into the fire.

"Is it a sort of holiday?" Picard asked.

"I told you we come up for air."

"Then it is your intention to return again as soon as this is over?"

"It is my intention to do as I wish."

"Why would you tell me that, Q, all of that, as if you needed them?" In the face of Q's obvious discomfort, Picard found the courage he required. Adrenaline tightened his throat as he leaned forward. "Q. You must have seen something in me when we first met. What changed between then and now? Enough of this nonsense about the Continuum."

Q's eyes shot to Picard's. A moment's silence.

"Nothing I told you was nonsense."

"That it has as much sway over you as you claim is nonsense. That much is clear."

"I made no claim as to its sway."

"True, you've added you can ignore them if you wish. I'm finding the whole concept of 'committing yourself' a little vague. Conveniently so."

"Convenient? I was stumbling through that explanation. If you were a little sturdier I could beam it into your head, _that_ would be convenient."

"But you can ignore them, which would lead one to assume there's something else motivating you here, something else that's changed. Are you really so unaware as to have missed this? Or is it disorganization, this contradiction?"

"My, but we're very persistent today!"

"As persistent as you are unforthcoming. I don't buy this cloak of superiority, Q; I never have. You have a mind, with reason, with logic, and though the details may very well lie beyond my perception the logic does not. Logic is universal. Stop evading the question, Q. What changed?"

Q made no immediate attempt to respond. His expression became more and more pained, however, and Picard thought he saw an array of answers flitting behind his eyes, examined and then discarded one after the other. The silence drew on, but Picard would not abort. Let Q answer or refuse to. Let him be genuine.

"You're old," Q said at last. It had all the earmarks of one of his flippant quips except there was no lightness of heart in his demeanor, and no follow-up either.

He was serious.

"And that matters to you? You mean I can't… I can't _walk_ fast enough?"

"No," Q said, fidgeting in several ways at once: readjusting himself in his seat, raising his chin, picking some lint off his knee. "It means you'll be dead in forty-something years. It means in thirty-something years your mind will start to go. It means you've depreciated in value. I told you you were old last time we met, not as nicely as I would have liked, but nonetheless. It isn't something I can overlook."

"I see," Picard said, forcing it out for the sake of appearing strong. Q's reasoning was not wholly foreign to him—in fact a lot of question marks were beginning to match up to answers now that he'd said it. But that did not mean Picard was glad it was true. He had hoped his humanity to be only a small dissuasion for Q, not the entirety of it. He felt a little foolish for being so easily led along. So easily let go.

Q, who had been watching Picard closely, leaned forward. "_This_ is why you had to scheme it out of me."

"You think I'm not aware I'm going to die?"

"No. Delusional as to the rest of the universe not dying with you."

The unfairness of this ruffled him. "All mortals see their lives that way. And do not pretend you're not equally self-centered. What does twenty years mean to a Q? I was twenty years younger and my age did not matter then. You're raising the issue a little late, don't you think?"

"Don't dissect this. It's not going to be prettier inside."

"I will be the judge of that. Billions of millennia you've lived, you were just flaunting that."

"Millions."

"I fail to see how the whole of my life is any more significant than twenty years against _millions_ of millennia."

"Yes, you're very smart. Good math. Your lifetime is nothing against mine. In fact we should frame it the other way and say rather than mistaken I was insane to even speak to you. Attachment to a mortal—that's why the Continuum mocked me. Less to do with your status so much as your impending demise. Frankly I don't really see the benefits in pursuing it again."

"Attachment."

"Yes."

"You use that word."

"Why not?"

"I think it's significant. And as for what benefits there might be in an _attachment_, whatever benefits you saw twenty years ago."

"If only they existed anymore! When you're marooned in space you'll take any old garbage scow home because you aren't in a place to be picky. But if you're setting out fresh from Earth…" Q opened his palms.

"I didn't realize I was a last ditch effort to entertain yourself."

"It's an analogy. It enlightens one aspect of the discourse. You shouldn't use it to extrapolate about every other aspect."

"An analogy describing how you viewed me."

"_View_ you. It was different back then."

"And what exactly was it back then?"

"How did _you_ view me back then, Picard? How do you view me now?"

"I asked you."

"Yes, you've peppered me with questions tonight. Your turn to play the open book. Or if we can't decide who goes first, how about we both write down our answers and pass them off at the same time?"

"I think my hand might be a bit arthritic for writing."

Q's eyes went heavenward. "Surely you can do better than that."

"Apparently not."

"Well Picard, I think it's safe to say we're arguing. I think it's also safe to say it was you who pushed us willy-nilly into it."

"I didn't appear to have a choice. It was that or go along with your charade. But I take responsibility, since you won't. You've won, and you may go. Clearly there's no point in us ever meeting again."

Q stood. "Wonderful."

"Excellent."

Q's hand shot to the mantle where he clasped a piece of paper and threw it into the fire. Picard wasn't sure what had happened. He glanced between Q and the fire. As the paper started to curl and blacken, he recognized it. His first thought was how angry he must have made Q for him to stoop so low. His second thought: _Good_ _I upset him. He upset _me_. _

"Let the record be shown you released me from my obligation. It is fulfilled, and I expect you to fulfill yours. If I catch you so much as glancing across the borders of the Federation, I'll treat you as any other mortal who crosses me, whether it be death, blighting, maiming, etcetera. Do you understand?"

"You've reversed the xenocide of those species?"

"_Not_ in the rules."

"Then I have no intention of obeying you."

Q rolled his jaw, his lips crammed shut, as though he were counting to ten before getting angry. "They were killed because you challenged me. I'd be wary, Picard, very wary of challenging me again."

"They were killed as a warning to me against travelling further, which I am distinctly not doing. However, if you don't reverse it, I see no motive for me to honor anything."

"So more don't die."

"I thought I was the only one being punished in the circumstance of my disobedience? You should get your story straight."

"They remain dead, past tense, whereas you will be punished, future tense. I am this close to giving you the intellect of an infant. Let's see you plot a course then."

"Why not? You already treat me that way. Saving their lives more than talking to you was my priority, and you know that. That's why you threatened it."

"And yet you didn't put it in the rules."

"Damn your rules, Q. Damn you, if you've really changed so much."

Q affected a groan. "How shall I go on without the approval of the captain?"

"You may clown, but this is in very poor taste. I will protest it."

"How could you possibly?"

"I will hire my own ship and fly straight back to that planet, since it bothered you so much the first time."

Their faces were already close when Q stepped closer. "I'll kill you," he said, a fleck of moisture hitting Picard's cheek.

"It won't be much of a punishment since I'm practically dead."

"You tedious, feckless old canker. Even if I gave you the _universe_, you would still find cause to defy me."

"I'm beginning to agree."

Q's glare was so intense parts of his face were beginning to twitch. His nose. His lower eyelids. He sucked the air in and out of his mouth.

"Go on, Q. Kill me. It's the only way you'll have peace."

Q pulled away. Near the bookshelf he seemed to collect himself, rolling back and forth on his feet, smiling to himself like he'd heard a joke no one but he would understand.

"It's never nuanced with you, is it? 'Kill me, Q.' Because if I'm not enabling you, I might as well. If one agreement ends poorly for you, all agreements are null! It matters not that I'm an occasional philanthropist by your own admission. I'm morally stunted. Or if I save the Federation from annihilation by the Borg. Eighteen of your crew died, so I'm evil incarnate. Never mind that I see all the pieces. Never mind that I have a billion times your experience and wisdom. I'm Q, and I should exhaust myself trying, even as the act of exhausting myself leaves me impotent to fulfill the unending list of your paltry, self-centered demands. If I'm not just so, I must be the devil himself. And better to squirrel yourself away than anyone see you _speaking_ to me. If you must be with Starfleet, you must be with Starfleet one-hundred percent. How foolish to suggest I take you anywhere exciting, even if no one will miss you! I save your life—_twice!_—and if I'm done doing that there's no point in us ever meeting again. All the severity, all the black and white, and where did it get you, Picard? Here. Dusty, dumpy, dreary Earth. A horrible black hole of a life that I count myself fortunate to have avoided falling into."

"If there's any black and white it's you. Sixty years, not forty, not twenty. Either sixty or there's no point in bothering."

"And of course you won't even entertain the thought of me extending your life. Humanity _au naturel_, or dead."

"I let you heal me."

"You didn't have a choice."

"I might have broken it again."

Q's head tilted back with a laugh. "There it is! There's that Picardian logic tripping all over itself, always a joy to behold! But mine will be the last word. Mine always is. And the day that you die I could throw a party that would consume pages of your history books, an event akin the Eugenics wars or the Roman civilization. I could snap and your name would be blotted from memory. A celebration that lasts a century, and no one would recall why. You've certainly made me angry enough. You've certainly given me cause. But justified though I am I'm not going to do anything to you, Picard. Do you know why? I don't care. About justice. About vengeance. About you."

Picard saw himself from afar. Like he was watching the scene from the ceiling, his emotions displaced along with his perspective, lacking all prior knowledge of their history or kinship. What he saw was this: two people, two friends, who knew all the strengths and weaknesses of the other, who knew exactly which insults to fling, and when, and who were making full use of this knowledge. Whatever closeness they had had was disintegrating. Whatever truth lay at the heart of their dissension had been cast aside in favor of making the other feel worse than they themselves had moments before. The forward momentum was palpable, insatiable, the quaking of an avalanche. If one of them did not step aside now both would be trampled. No one left to throw anything. No one left to rebuild.

Picard had no ready reply when Q was finished. He had stopped listening with that intent. Instead he heard and reheard the last words Q had said, stunned by them, a cookie-cutter validation of what he'd just concluded. They would denounce the very foundation upon which the argument had begun.

Years of Starfleet had taught Picard cool-headedness in the face of hostility, and this was no better. Showing no sign of distress he plucked up the wine glasses and made for the kitchen. He muttered as he went, knowing Q would hear, "You cared enough to destroy that letter."

He didn't know if it would work, and truthfully he wasn't hoping one way or the other. What would hoping do? Q would either respond or he wouldn't. At least Picard had made the effort.

Needing to do something with his hands, he started on the dishes. The water was warm, palliating, carrying the food and grime away with it. When the last plate was clean, Picard took a towel and made slow, circular motions across the porcelain. A window over the sink showed Q entering the room.

"There's your letter," Q said. There was a smacking sound as it landed on the island. Picard dried his hands and opened it, verifying it was the same as before. "And I never gave you a letter," he observed.

Q said nothing.

"It was good of you to give me this. To let me keep it, even if you've changed your mind." Picard had something else to say, but he decided it would sound too saccharine and therefore too manipulative. Of all the people Picard had met, Q was perhaps the most sensitive to manipulation. "I'm sure everywhere you go, you're getting asked for things."

Still Q said nothing.

"You're right that I'm black and white. In truth, Q, there's a lot of black and white in you too. And I hope I'm not remiss in saying that. You used to claim we were something alike, and I used to not see it. Well I'm admitting it now. We are. Maybe your past self can feel some victory at that. Maybe then your speaking to me today would not be completely pointless, although you have an eternity."

Picard was beginning to resent the pressure of Q's silence. He didn't know what else to say, and wasn't exactly enamored with what he'd said already. He distracted himself drying another dish. "Mankind built machines to wash dishes centuries ago. They did all of this work automatically, wetting, washing, drying. But I never saw the appeal in owning such a machine. Too much like a replicator. The joy of keeping one's own china is caring for it. It's work certainly. Every year or so I have to polish out the cracks. But so it goes, to own something real."

Q's voice was dark, sneering. "Is that supposed to be a metaphor for something?"

"Yes." Picard put the dish aside. "Why are you still here, Q? You seemed very set on leaving."

"There's still the small matter of your obeying me, isn't there?"

"But you told me you'd kill me if I go anywhere. You were deciding if you wanted to kill me now."

Q's sigh seemed to empty his lungs. He leaned on the island for support. He pulled the letter towards him, absentmindedly sliding his finger over his handwriting. The characters laced and unlaced themselves, like tiny creatures sensing their maker, until they were still again, Standard again.

"I'm reversing the explosion. Because you asked so nicely."

"Good."

"I don't even get a 'thank you,' do I? Because," he mimicked Picard's voice, "it's the moral thing to do."

"Thank you."

"I can't say it's the moral thing to do. I'll meet you halfway and say it's kinder."

"An immense kindness, I would say. So much so as to be obvious."

Q tilted his head as though acknowledging the point. "And since I took away the ship and therefore my responsibility, I suppose it doesn't matter where you go anymore."

"May I have the ship if I promise to stay within the Federation?"

Q gave him a sharp look. "We both know what you're really asking with that question."

"And?"

"If you won't come out and ask it, I don't see why I should have to answer it."

"Will I ever see you after today?"

Q became interested in rubbing out a spot on the countertop. "I know I should be flattered you wanted to talk to me. That you came all that way not even knowing if you would. That last time in your ready-room, I would have settled for even a sliver of that gesture. But it's different now. I am involved with the Continuum. That wasn't fiction, even if it wasn't the whole of the story. As such, I don't have quite as much free time."

"Not even to visit once a year?"

"It's difficult to know."

"Because I'm dying?" Picard delivered it like a joke, but Q seemed lodged in the sadness of it. Sinking, actually. Pausing only as long as it took to marvel at that, Picard moved on.

"Of course I want to explore, but failing that even a visit would be palatable. I don't see my friends very often, and since retiring I am much more aware of that fact. Surely you can spare a few days out of a year. If I am the best human you've ever met."

"I should have never put that in writing. I can see it's going to be used against me in all manner of un-clever ways."

"Only if you let it."

"I don't see that I have much of a choice."

"What are you afraid of, Q? You're starting to sound like me now."

Q's gaze lifted to Picard's. His eyebrows furrowed the slightest in thought. Millions of centuries, and not a grey hair among them.

* * *

Picard's mind was more exhausted than anything else after weeks of wondering what-if. He slept that night without waking or dreaming, slept for what felt the first time in years, blissful in the knowledge that he was done with worrying for now. He couldn't help but feel a little self-satisfied, too, though he would never show it. After wrangling in an omnipotent being, how could he not? One as stubborn as Q, no less.

"I'll take you to the planet," Q had told him before he'd gone, "but that's all I'm promising to do."

Picard replied he didn't need any promises, to which Q answered, "Good. Because the Continuum won't like this as it stands. If you had a fraction the amount of nagging from Starfleet as I do from them…" Q didn't finish the thought.

As put-out as he seemed to be, he hesitated then, staring at Picard with a mixture of puzzlement, wariness, relief. It was as if he was asking himself, "What have I gotten into?" Picard had asked himself the same. In some ways this had been a struggle; in others, all too easy, all too fast.

"You succeeded in tricking me, Jean-Luc. For a while there I didn't think you had."

And with a flash of light, he was gone.

Later Q fulfilled his promise. He returned the _Prospero_ to Picard and left him at the planet in the Delta Quadrant. He didn't take them down to the planet's surface or offer to venture back in time or any of the extravagances he would have offered in the past. Those sorts of offers came much later in this renewed chapter of their friendship. It was as if Q was testing him, wanting to see if it was really exploring Picard wanted, as he had claimed, or access to the vast reserves of Q's power, as he was no doubt more accustomed to. Whatever the cause, Picard was patient. It wasn't hard to be. Q was pleasant enough company when he wasn't needling or testing or teaching. He lurked in the background, watching Picard or more often staring off into nothing.

At the end of two weeks Picard showed Q his theory on the pine tree, and Q, after browsing the PADD for a moment, smiled. Just a smile, not a yes or a no, not any acknowledgement that Picard had done good work. "This one was easy. I should give you another one and see how you do."

It took three weeks of observation at another planet in another star system before Picard had compiled his findings. Q did not smile this time. "Good," he said evenly. Then for the next two hours he pointed out all the areas where Picard had gone wrong and where, if he had expanded his thinking even slightly at the onset, most of his later assumptions would have worked out. "It was close enough to be interesting. A Q could see it in twenty seconds, but it's not bad. For a human."

They argued after that. Picard had worked too hard not to boil over. This time, however, Q did not declare how naive Picard was and Picard did his best not to drag out Q's moral failings. The quarrel remained surprisingly on point.

When they tired of each other, which they often did, Picard was left to visit friends and family and Q was left to do whatever it was that he did. The Continuum, presumably. Will, Beverly, Data… all of them knew what was occupying Picard's time and who was facilitating that. Word had gotten out; Picard wasn't quite sure how. He didn't mind speaking about Q. He even bragged about him on occasion. Q was a far cry from the thoughtless, self-centered meddler he was before. He negotiated peace treaties. He stopped up volcanoes and supernovae. He was almost respectable.

They visited one of the civilizations that worshipped Q. A pre-warp culture, which Picard posited had a lot to do with it. They had lingered for a week and were in the midst of a religious festival when Picard confessed he would rather be anywhere else and in fact he had heard about an archeological dig in the Gamma Quadrant, which sounded quite relaxing if Q could just drop him off? But instead of Picard, Q relocated both the archeological team and the ruins. On one side of the hill was a temple to Q; on the other, a dazed group of scientists and a half-excavated funereal mound. Q vanished for days, reappearing only after Picard, in a fit of angry acquiescence, recited an invocation in the temple. The priests lit torches and pounded drums, and then there was Q, sitting on a throne barely visible in the smoke, offering his hand for a priest to caress.

Almost respectable.

It went on for five years. Ten. They did not see each other every day, but there was usually an arrangement on the horizon. Eventually their relationship became such that they rarely argued anymore. What was there to say that had not been said? If Q was still petty and immature, he was better at hiding it. And Picard was no longer so determined that things must be done his way.

Any data Picard collected, he passed back to the Federation. Sometimes Q would flaunt phenomena no human had ever seen, things that might prove truly groundbreaking, that might revolutionize learning as humanity knew it. Whenever this happened Q would reach out and take the scanner from Picard's hands, or the scanner would malfunction, or Picard would collect the data and later it would be gone. Picard had not understood this at first. It was much later he saw the wisdom. He would always have Earth to go back to—Earth unchanged, humanity as he had left it, evolving at its own slow, familiar pace. He needed never make the choice between helping his own kind and feeling kinship with them, between being human and being with Q.

He was content, even content with the idea that Q was responsible for his contentment. He could finally admit openly what inwardly he had always known, that Q _was_ more knowledgeable… about some things. He forgot nothing, not a promise of an engagement, not a food Picard had mentioned he might like trying three months ago. Never once had Picard appeared on a planet and gasped for air. Never once was he tired or hungry and Q did not offer a respite. Intentional. That was the word.

If Picard had concerns about Q treating the universe well, at least he could say that Q treated him well. It was a start. He knew that one day, in his absence, or rather because of it, Q would promise to do more.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Author's note:**_

_I am really sad for this to be over. Writing this has been one of the most positive experiences of my life. That's a ton to do with your amazing feedback, so please leave some if you've enjoyed it! (Yep, I'm whoring again. Do it. DO IT. Come out from the shadows, lurkers.) I love knowing there are people out there who like Q even a tad as much as I do. And I loved, loved, loved getting to message some of you!_

_Thank you so much for reading. In the words of Q: See you... out there._

* * *

I couldn't leave him like that, all sad and lonely with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Even leaving the galaxy at his disposal, he'd have a dismal time without me. Perhaps if I only met him once or twice a month, the Continuum would not notice. Perhaps if I did not dole on him too lavishly, too blatantly… not that he would accept anything grand. Perhaps since he was no longer a player in the blip that was the Federation, all of this interaction would coast under the radar.

This was the narrative I told myself, all of it hinging on the simple rule that I not see him _too often_. And when that rule was broken and broken and broken, I kept telling myself the narrative even though like a deflated parachute it no longer held weight. I didn't care. I wanted what I wanted and I was Q and the universe was mine for the taking. And when the Continuum finally flagged me for it, I blamed Q for thwarting nearly every chance I'd had at getting away. It was a dilemma of fatalism versus free will, I argued, knowing the Q are nauseously fond of that specific philosophical quandary. How could I escape when I'd never been given the choice? That I was diseased no one denied. That I should quit my addiction cold turkey, no one suggested or even thought. Even in species not governed by whims and fancies, the addiction-prone are cared for more than that. I needed to be fondled back to health. But before any plan could be determined or any case worker assigned to me, there was still the small matter of Q, of how much he was to blame for this and whether he should also be involved in my reclamation, which stirred up enough controversy that I went unchecked for a while longer.

Jean-Luc could be blamed as well—not that the Continuum would recognize it. He had a curious way of making one feel present. Back when he was in Starfleet, I believe his inferiors referred to it as _charisma_ and their reaction to it as _nerves_. I, being superior, did not experience it as that. He did not intimidate me. Quite the opposite: he calmed me. It was as though I was a moon to his planet, a planet to his star, as though simply by existing he lured me in as gravity lures mass, until I could not budge.

How could I begin to deny him anything? The universe least of all.

We never discussed his age. It was a luxury he could blithely ignore it, and more than a little selfish. I would have slowed his degeneration the instant he gave me the word. Whenever I made a passing mention of this, disguised as a quip, he would change the subject or make an empty quip back. Even as his hearing was going, his eyesight, even as I wondered how much longer until his mind went and could I really demand a decision of him then? Would it really be _him _I was demanding a decision of? Even then, he took his precious little time.

I asked him once over dinner what I would do when he died. He was well past a hundred and I needed to know if he had given it one-thousandth the amount of thought I had. He answered with one of his classic Picard smirks. A little saggier than it used to be, but it caught me just the same.

"You'll throw a party," he said, "larger than the Eugenics wars and the Roman empire." And then he reached over the table and squeezed my hand.


End file.
